Why I think I'm getting an ulcer

1. Bees -- Ira Flatow on Science Friday This is so scary.
How Could We Live Without Them?
2. Glaciers -- US glaciers melting Could all that newly liberated moisture what's been flooding the midwest and East with rain all summer?
Disappearing Beauty

3. Sarah Palin. Obama plan is "evil" What will it take to get this astoundingly ignorant attack dog to sink mercifully into discredited obscurity?
I'm Scared of Clowns

My Vote is Really Absentee: "Hot Case" Cold

Boo Hoo. No Vote

Ted and I just saw the rather mediocre movie "Swing Vote" in which a good-hearted but dopey drunk (Kevin Costner) ends up casting the deciding vote in a presidential race. Who did he pick? Kelsey Grammer or Dennis Hopper (Dennis Hopper??? Man, he's the one for me...delicious to imagine). Anyway, we were supposed to get the message that every vote counts. Okay, I get it.

Mine didn't. I really wanted to vote for Dayne Walling, the kid Rhodes Scholar whose mother I've known for about 25 years, for Mayor of Flint today. I really wanted to vote in favor of a millage for a hospital that serves the poorest people of Flint. i really wanted to vote for a gay friend who used to be my neighbor at Sylvester Manor for City Council.

But I'm in LA, where at the moment, for example, some guy is going up and down 26th Street with a cart, yelling "tamale tamale tamale" and the guy downstairs has his woodfire grill going in the driveway for an al fresco dinner facing the harbor. It's a long way from what we used to call Buick City. I love both of my locales, but it's Flint that rouses my political passions most -- it's been a long hard trudge, still very much in progress, for the city to pull itself up out of misery. Increasingly, I care about that. I want vindication for GM's abandonment. I want the people who are left, hanging on to whatever they can of grace and hope, to get some reliable goodness.

So anyway, before I left Flint I sent in my request for an absentee ballot -- it was received June 26. Never got the ballot. Until today. Election Day. In my mailbox in San Pedro. It arrived at 11 a.m. PST, 2 p.m. Eastern, giving me six hours to file my vote.

Though I'd essentially given up hope before today, I placed a call to Gloria Boone in the Flint City Clerk's office. Of course she told me I was out of luck with no options. But I continued the conversation. Let's see, it was my fault that I submitted from an online form -- that is "not normal," Ms. Boone told me. I mistakenly sent it to the County Clerk's office. They sent it to the Flint City Clerk's Office (receipt stamp July 7) but apparently it was mixed up in a pile of voter registration documents. I should have checked -- didn't I wonder what had happened? So basically it was my fault. However. my envelope was postmarked July 31...how could anybody have turned this around that fast? Before I got Ms. Boone, another worker told me they hadn't received the ballots until last week. So I'm wondering if my complaints and the series of gaffes were immaterial. Anyway, Ms. Boone said she resented that I was criticizing the City Clerk's office when "we are only human." Indeed. Very human.

I want new city government. I want something to work right. I want government officials to be nice to me and to do their jobs professionally. But at least this time around, I didn't get to say that with my vote.

I see the envelope had written on it "Hot Case." You can see that above. Huh. Right. By now it's stone cold.

P.S. Fortunately, early returns suggest Dayne Walling has a healthy lead, without my vote.

How to Serve Tea and Plaudits for Rex's

So, while the airwaves are full of matters of import, drawling Jeff Sessions boringly and predictably interrogating Sonya Sotomayor, I've decided to broach my own issue of consequence: How To Serve Tea.

When I got sick last winter, among other changes I made, sadly abandoning my beloved double espressos at Steady Eddy's for instance, was to cut out almost all caffeine, and my morning beverage of choice became herb tea. Since I felt like I was sacrificing, I became quite attuned to making sure the new way was as pleasant as possible, and thus I've turned into something of a tea crank at restaurants.

First, there always should be non-caffeine options -- and not just some boring decaffeinated green teabags, but at least a handful of lively caffeine-free choices -- Steady Eddy's at the Flint Farmer's Market has one of my favorites, a pomegranate blend, and they also have peach and several citrus varieties.

Second, and to the point of this post, is how the hot water is served. Some places bring the cup filled with hot water and the little pitcher also filled with hot water. This makes no sense, unless you're also offered two teabags, one for each container. If it's served this way, you have to decide where to put your teabag. Obviously you'd begin with the cup, but then that means by the time your cup of tea is properly steeped, the bag is half-used up and your pitcher of tea would then be weaker than your first cup. Instead, the pitcher only should be filled with water; you put your teabag in there and fill the cup from the pitcher, so that all the tea is of the same strength. Then if you want more tea, you ask the server to bring you another teabag and fill the pitcher, not the cup, with fresh hot water.

Water in the teapot only -- hooray

Finally, the cafe should serve all kinds of sweeteners -- not just the excreble refined white sugar and Sweet 'n low. There should be raw (probably turbinado) sugar, Equal and Splenda. I'm a Splenda fan myself and my husband prefers Equal, and we find it irritating when neither are available.
Four kinds of sweetener -- hooray

The restaurant which consistently meets my tea-serving standards is Rex's Cafe at the corner of 22nd Street and Pacific in San Pedro, where I took the photos included here.

And I added a photo of my breakfast this morning, to note that they serve the best fruit bowl in town -- ordered with my disturbingly mammary but delicious "Green Eggs Cabrillo" (there's spinach under that cheese sauce).
Man, this breakfast needs a bra

Rex's is one of my favorite breakfast spots in Pedro -- a cheery yellow interior, friendly bi-lingual service, consistently fresh and delicious food, including excellent steel-cut oatmeal, and an interestingly varied and mellow clientele.

There, now I feel better. Bring it on, Sessions.