duck-shaped pain

It rained and drizzled all day yesterday (I now have a name for these days -- "Oregon days"), and I celebrated the only way I know how. Vegetable soup for lunch, chicken-fried steak for dinner.

I didn't make the chicken-fried steak. Some skills I am not yet ready to learn. My dad makes good chicken-fried steak, though, but he only does about once a year. Between the fried meat and the mashed potatoes and the cream gravy (he uses real cream � might as well, if you're only going to make it once a year), you have enough fat and cholesterol to stop a horse in its tracks. Even though I have the blood of several generations of hardy Southerners coursing through my veins, I must limit such meals to special occasions. Once you eat chicken-fried steak, every blood vessel and ounce of energy in your body is summoned to your stomach to aid in digestion. Other body functions are shut off or reduced to the barest minimum level possible for your continued survival. Don't try to walk after chicken-fried steak � your coordination will be shot. Don't try to talk � you brain won't work (all that will come out will be odd gurgling sounds). Just sit there and unbuckle the belt a few notches and enjoy the TV.

This meal will have me eating yogurt and green juice for the rest of the week, I fear. Must clean out the system somehow.

The only beer I had to enjoy with the chicken-fried steak was a bottle of Oregon Raspberry Wheat Ale � which just somehow seemed out of place. I think it would have been more appropriate to quaff some standard North American Industrial Lager with it, but essentially, beer is all the same in the end.

Woke up this morning and looked out the window at the dog. It was barely 50 outside and there he was, curled up in a ball, tail covering his nose like some tragic Dog Of The Arctic. I wanted to feel sorry for him, but all I could do was laugh.

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