Tater Tot Hot Dish Bleepin' Bjork Style

I had a wonderful surprise when my oldest son and his wife-to-be flew from Minneapolis/St. Paul to LAX to visit for a quick Saturday/Sunday visit.

The Viking Fan (and not a fair weather one either) and the Packer Princess (she has a Packer Favre jersey in pink) managed to talk my man and I into going to a bar in Hermosa Beach, Sharks Cove, which caters to Steeler Fans.  In case you don't know, when a football game starts at noon in Pittsburgh, that means it starts at 9 AM in Hermosa (the "h" is silent, means beautiful en espanol) Beach.

I don't know about you, but that time of morning is usually when I enjoy eating breakfast.  Breakfast at the bar.  Just may have been a first.  Here's what I found sort of exciting.  This bar serves tater tots with its breakfast instead of hash browns.

I mention all of this 'cuz...well...do you ever have some foods from your younger days that just seem like they will always be comfort food even though they may never be considered healthy or low-cal?  For me, tater tot hot dish is just one of those said dishes.

So, with this tater tot nudge I just had to make me some tater tot hot dish and see if I would still enjoy it.  You know, or is the memory better than the reality.  And as long as I was going to take this undertaking why not video it for posterity.

P.S.  Tater Tots are a registered trademark of the Ore-Ida company, first created in 1953 and first available in 1954.  Congratulations, Ore-Ida on 55 years of the tater tot.  Mahalo!

P.P.S.  I loaded the video to my Funny or Die page 'cuz I think it is at least a couple degrees of funny.  I decided I'd test seeing what happens if I embed the video from funnyordie.com.  What do you think?  Not so sure I love it compared to YouTube.  In case you would rather watch the video from YouTube instead, here's the link.

P.P.S.S.  To my Chicago, soul sister of the same name and the same light (yes, we will meet one day), I just want to say (1) thank you and (2) I believe this recipe is gluten-free.  I'm just sayin'!

The Business of Death

I write another blog, CaliforniVacation: SoCal Style, and articles as examiner.com's, L.A. Sightseeing Examiner.  I am happy to have the opportunity to do both.  The examiner gig allows me to be more journalistic while the CaliforniVacation gig allows me to be more loose and conversationalistic.  Still, both are primarily about sharing destinations and events in Southern California (SoCal).

This blog fills my void of writing about stuff that's makes me go "hmmm".  Simply I wonder about this.  Are there answers.  This seems like it might be fun.  No rhyme.  No reason.

I have this friend, also a blogger.  She is a fine photographer and a recent ex-Minnesotan.  She finds cemeteries beautiful.  She enjoys pondering what someones life may have been like to have the headstone which marks their grave represent them.  I'd never really thought of cemeteries in quite this way before.

Truth is I never really thought much about cememteries at all for most of my life.  I'm not sure you can call it luck but very few people in my life seemed to die.  At least very few close enough that I might be included in attending their funeral or their final cemetery resting place.  Now that I live in L.A. that's changed.  My dad, grandma and grandpa (and some great grandparents I don't really even remember) all have their remains residing at the same cemetery, Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.  I know.  How convenient.

My aunt's parents are also resting at Holy Cross as are her aunt, uncle and some celebrities too.  My aunt and uncle are quite dutiful about visiting all of them at least two or three times a year and bringing flowers or whatever. Bless them!  When I first moved back I admit I was a little excited and fascinated about visiting and being included in their ritual.  I was also amazed and most likely will blog about a future trip to the cemetery in about a month or so.

Why?

I guess I didn't actually ever think about it much, but the first time I saw the way Holy Cross gets decorated at Christmas time by those who visit their dearly departed, I found myself a bit in awe and a little amused.

Okay, so I can understand grief.  I can understand mourning.  But they are dead people, people.  What is left is inanimate dust more or less.  In my mind I have a better chance of connecting with my loved ones when I think of them than trekking to a cemetery to visit a slab of stone covering where their lifeless body is buried.

When you drive through the iron gate of Holy Cross Cemetery you are at the entrance of 200 acres of beautifully manicured grounds.  It really is a quiet and peaceful place.

I want to be very clear that I have nothing against Holy Cross Cemetery per se.  As far as places go, I am sort of proud to have my loved ones remains residing in such a beautiful place.

NOW!  Let's visit some of the things that make me go hmmm.....

A place for the dead.  Burying.  Won't we run out of room?

What would aliens from another planet think that we preserve a dead loved one in a coffin and bury them in the ground?  We go through all of this and yet we will never see them again with our physical eyes.  And the part of them we really remember most, isn't there anymore anyway.  Doesn't it seem silly?  And doesn't it make more of a case for simply torching our cold dead bodies to "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" then?  Or put them in an urn, which takes much less room?

About 60,000 people a year die in Los Angeles County.  Wouldn't we soon run out of room to bury them all?  If each dead person needs about 8' by 4' of real estate, how long before all the real estate is consumed by dead bodies?  I'd do the math, but I don't want to?  Might just be very, very depressing.

I also wondered about the business of all of this.  In 2006 it was estimated that the business of death was booming in at about $11 billion dollars.  Yes, that is with a B.  And the average funeral at about $6,500.

All that money.  Yet as I looked around Holy Cross Cemetery grounds I couldn't help thinking of the way they have things set up and how it seems like such a metaphor that whoever you thought you were in life; rich, poor, young, old, etc. death was a great equalizer.  None of all the this and that and crying or joy or fights with others...none of it made a lick of difference to the deceased now 'cuz they are dead.

I personally didn't want any of it and had always just assumed I would want to be creamated with my ashes thrown into the Pacific Ocean that I love so much.  Then through my visits and walks through Holy Cross Cemetery it got me thinking that at least with so much of my family already residing in the same place and with more slated to reside there as their time comes, maybe I could have my cake and eat it too.

I could still be creamated.  And perhaps like Gandhi some of my ashes could be ceremoniously strewn into the ocean and the rest could reside in an urn and placed in one of the urn spots at Holy Cross Cemetery.  I mean as long as a relative is visiting, they could stop by and visit me too.  Right?

I also muse at some of the things we think about.  I know someone who has a shared site with a spouse who is already deceased.  Now that it is over ten years later and she is ten times happier with her new man, she's not so sure she wants to spend eternity in the spot she's already secured.  Then there are those who loved each other so very, very much but the husband just didn't want to be buried in the dirt.  Too dark.  So he is in the masoleum and she is in the ground.

That was the other thing that struck me as I walked around.  How do you decide where on the grounds you would want to be buried assuming you want to be buried?  If you don't want to be buried, how do you decide where in the masoleum you want to spend eternity?  Do you want the stone that is big or do you want the small one.  How much do you want written on the stone?  Which color stone?  Do you want to be by the rest of your family or should you wait?  Would you rather have an urn spot?  Do you want one you can see in or one you can't?

This particular cemetery is catholic-based and opened in 1939.  Back in the day did you have to be catholic or they turned you away?  Did you have to be white?  Have the parameters changed over the years to "get in"? Does it matter now?

And the more I pondered and walked around, the more all of this seemed to make a case for reincarnation and the like.  Is this really all there is?  Is this really where my remains will stay for all eternity?

It seems like some of the things us humans come up with that eventually become acceptable and the norm, why don't we question them more?

And I don't really have any answers for you.  According to the article I found on the Business of Death, it would appear that much of what is driving the $11 billion industry is that individuals want to have lavish and personalized funerals as a sort of last hurrah.  So as silly as it all seems to me, who am I to say what is or is not silly to you.

One of the residents at Holy Cross Cemetery is Bela Lugosi, the original movie Dracula, who was buried in his Dracula cape.  We have to take this on faith 'cuz we can't see into his coffin or tell from his quite plain grave marker whether this is really true or folk legend.  If that is how he wanted to go or if you want to be buried with your golf clubs, who am I to say?

And with that, that is all the BLEEP I wish to blog about today.

Oh yeah!  Happy Halloween.

Google Search

When last I posted, I mentioned instead of using google to see if I could find an answer to something I wanted to know, I'd let the Universe bring me an answer like it did with Borders Books having free wi fi.

So, I'm just going to put it out there.  I Google.  "Hello!  My name is Lori and I Google myself."

Wow!  When I put it like that it does sound a little naughty.

The first time I did it was a little sad 'cuz I was no where to be found for pages and pages and a little fun 'cuz I hadn't realized there were so many of me out there in the disguise of prominent women's college basketball players, attorneys, Northrop employees, Chicago residents and more.

Months, a couple of web sites, Facebook presence, Twitter presence, YouTube presence, Funny or Die presence, blogs and more; I realize that I am much more competitive than I thought.  I mean it is great that I now am listed multiple times on the first page, but it sucks that I can't seem to crack the top 5.  And the top 5 are what you see without having to scroll down to the other 5 listings on the first page.  Those spots seem to be permanently reserved for the me that is a prominent women's college basketball player.  Damn me! I mean her!

What's a girl to do just to crack the top 5?  Strip and go naked?  I bet that wouldn't even help unless I wrote a press release about it and it was picked up by all the major press like CNN and GMA and some other initials.  And is that really what I want to be remembered for?

There will come a day
You will hear me say
Hip Hip Hooray
I cracked the top 5 of Google today.

Of course, none of it means anything if others aren't googling me too.  And what's next?  My own wiki page.  When does it end?  Can we never truly be satisfied?  Is there or can there ever truly be a final frontier?  And what the BLEEP, maybe that's something to be thankful for.  You know, like free wi fi.

My tongue just doesn't want to seem to work that way!

I'm a Cali Girl, born in Inglewood, city of Champions (even though the champion Lakers have since moved uptown to the Staples Center).  Moving back to Hawthorne, the original Cougar Town (thank you very much), has been a sheer delight after spending many years in Massachusetts, Minnesota and North Dakota.  I know, how jealous are you of me right now?

Especially compared to Minnesota (where most of those many years were spent...hmmm...I love how my first inclination to describe living there is to refer to it as spent, as opposed to enjoyed or lived or any other number of describer-type words) where us white folks, many with "ski" at the end of their last name, appear to be the majority; California can be likened to the way I used to view some places in Canada.  You know the ones I used to think were weird because English and French competed for control in most spoken language in that area.

In other words, I never thought I would see the day when I felt that I was at a loss because I only spoke English in my native land.  You know, 'cuz I don't habla espanol.  (Don't cry for me Argentina, I'm doing just fine with English only.  This isn't meant to be a debate about the rightness of southern California's bilingual nature.)

I feel I was fortunate enough to almost immediately bond with my still best friend, Ericka, over our love for Prince's music.  Having lived for a while practically across the street from Prince's Paisley Park, I immediately was welcomed into Ericka's world.  She's a much more loyal fan than I.  Ericka is the youngest and only sibling in her Nicaraugan family to be born in the USA.  So, she's BI.  She speaks English and "hablas" fluently.

My being immersed and merging my world with Ericka's family's world for over five years, I thought I'd be a little farther along with the "habla" myself.  I even bought a "learn a new spanish word a day" calendar hoping I'd somehow become more fluent.  Let me put it to you this way.  I may not be Albert Einstein, but I am teachable.  I passed the CA Realtors Exam first try.  I passed the Series 7 test to sell securities first try.  So what's up?

Today, I think I figured it out.  One of Ericka's brothers, Tomas, sometimes purposely hablas espanol...bless his heart...with me.  I think he feels like he is doing me a favor to help me learn Spanish.  He will then wait for me either to respond to him en espanol or repeat what he is saying.

I'll listen.  And I want to repeat it.  I really do.  Yet as my brain is gearing up to command my tongue and lips and mouth and all to get into formation so I can say what he said, there just seems to be some sort of revolt that takes place.  And I tell you, part of me honestly believes, "My tongue just doesn't want to seem to work that way!" You know what?  I'm okay with it.