Category Archives: Just Me – AmeliaJake

Just Me - AmeliaJake, Special Memories

Chukar

I saw a reference to chukar hunting that led me to a site about hunting in Upland Idaho and a video (called A Fistful of Chukars) of a man and a dog and chukars falling from the sky.  I learned a little about chukar hunting – not much – and saw that there was a reference on the site labelled “If you are out hunting by yourself and feel you are having a heart attack… this is how to handle it.”

That is probably there because of this description of an outing:

You just climbed to the top of a mountain.  You didn’t get there taking a hiker’s path, the slow rhythmic pace along a trail.  You got there cross-country chasing a dog that is chasing a bird.  Your steps fall downhill to get to the dog on point and hopefully the flush of a covey.  Your steps fall uphill racing to get above the feathered creatures you admire so much.  Once you are on top or even crest a high vantage to look down on the rolling ridges and water below you know what it is to have earned something.  It isn’t the bird in the bag you will think of at this very moment, it’s the view.  The stark beauty of the place you are in settles into you.  Once you feel this you have found another piece of the puzzle that is chukar hunting.

Karl DeHart
UplandIdaho.com

But getting back to chukars, when I first saw the word and that they were hunted, I thought it sounded like something you should do with a khyber knife. And when I checked a Cornell site to learn abou chukars, I exclaimed, “I knew it!” because the first thing I read was this: A native of southern Eurasia, the Chukar was introduced into the United States from Pakistan . . .

I then went to the shopping part of the site and found a new phrase: CHUCKING FUKAR! It was printed on hats.

By the hilt and the haft of the khyber knife, what in the heck does fukar mean? I looked it up. This proved a difficult task. Most results on the Google search engine referred me back to the place on Upland Idaho I had come from. When I put in “fukar definition” it asked me if I meant FUBAR – and we have been there before . . . Foo Bar and all that.

The best I could come up with was a reference to a post titled  Sand Merchants Baned in a blog titled Corax’al.

“Fukar” is the noun form of the verb (that we of Vra’Akar came up with) for the action by which mothers and fathers engender children. But in usage just as common, one might hear ‘jalla‘ used to mean ‘copulate’. Since it also means ‘to strike’ or ‘to beat’, it shares an etymology analogous to that of the infamous English F-word.))

cfhatorange

So how this happened to get on hats, I don’t know, but next to the picture, they have noted this:

If you have chased chukar then you understand the meaning.

Well, at least if a tornado carries me, like Dorothy, far away – say to Peshawar –  I will know two words. I think I’d better just say “Chukar”.  Although, “Take me to the American Embassy” would probably be best.

Ack, some of the pheasant hunters here are gearing up for chukar . . .

Just Me - AmeliaJake

Drama at Kendallville fairgrounds – well, not really

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It was raining this morning and someone was walking in the swine barn that is mostly roof at the fairgrounds where Sydney likes to go to stretch out his 12 year old muscles in the morning after we have dropped off kids at school. So we drove on down to the 4-H pony barn that is at the east end of the fairgrounds and just southeast of the corral.

It has four open doorways – two on each end –  that are blocked by your basic pipe gate that reaches all the way – almost – to the ground. But there was enough room for Sydney to get down and slide under. I’m thinking: horses were there this weekend, lots or horses, and that dog is going to smell like manure. Resigned, I waited and waited and then honked and no Sydney. Now it is raining harder and I’m staring at the spot where Sydney entered. No dog. Then in the distance I see him scooting out one of the far doorways and running around the barn in the pouring rain to get in the car.

Sydney, I love you. I guess I love the smell of wet dog and manure in the morning . . . when it’s you. Now, let me bop you on your cute head for going in there.

Just Me - AmeliaJake

Breaking Bad – bad breaks for Jesse

(Oh, if you haven’t seen the past couple of weeks and don’t want to know, stop reading. And something else: In typing this post, I accidentally typed “the first think in my head” and then corrected it. But, actually, the first think in my head seems more accurate; I may have made a scientific grammar discovery.)

Now, to the bad side of AmeliaJake

Jesse, Jesse, Jesse. Walt gave you a gun last week and sent you to collect money owed you by a strung out couple living in a totally trashed house . . . with their very little boy. They weren’t home, so you fed the little boy breakfast and felt for him. They came home with an ATM machine in tow, literally. They had literally ripped-off other ATMs but hadn’t been able to get them open. You yelled at them for not taking care of their kid, as well as not having the money.

Then they got the gun, but didn’t get the machine open. And then the mother got mad at the father and pushed the ATM over on his head, crushing it and, by the way, causing the ATM to open.

You got the gun back, grabbed some cash, took the kid outside to wait for the police and social services. Well, of course, you didn’t wait.

Now, you’ve got this big reputation as the Drug Guy who handled a non-payment dispute with an ATM to the head. And Walt, he sees the opportunity to take over more territory and says, “corner the market and raise the price.”

And the first thing in my mind is, “Walt! That’s not an ethical business practice!” I watched through the ATM affair and the drug dealer’s head on a tortoise in the desert . . .  and the explosion . . .  and what shocks me most is your raising the price??? You’re back at the head on the tortoise, aren’t you? Walt didn’t do that, but Walt is getting badder.

I don’t know what I’m becoming. If this is a dark, dark comedy – and I  don’t like those – why am I watching? To see just how outrageous it can get? Because it is only a made-up story? The previews show maybe Walt being interrogated by police and the first “think” in my head was, “Oh, no, he’s going to get caught.” Jesse, you and I have got to RUN.

Just Me - AmeliaJake

Breaking Bad . . . some more

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When I came to the end of the  first season of Breaking Bad, I wrote a little bit. Well, I’m into the second season of it now and I’m feeling pretty shaky about Walt and me.  Walt is a criminal; I mean I can’t get around that. And he does what he has to in order to avoid capture, not too mention he’s keeping Jesse in the business when Jesse would like to get out. I like Jesse. I’m starting to be afraid of Walt . . . and maybe of me and the possibility I could become a criminal. And what scares me the most is that I worry I wouldn’t be good at it. I’ll watch tonight; I almost always watch.  And I don’t know what I’ll be thinking tomorrow.

Just Me - AmeliaJake

I had other things to do

Fortunately, I had no reason to watch old movies today . . . because it is William Holden Day on Turner Classic Movies. And I have remarked before how I feel about William Holden. I did watch the ending of Sunset Boulevard this morning, mainly because I remember seeing it years ago and thinking Gloria Swanson was old and now she looks quite a bit younger. In fact, she is supposedly 50 in the movie, which is ack, ack, ack, 10 years younger than I am now.

Ah, The Maltese Falcon is on right now . . . “You’re good.  You’re very good.”

Just Me - AmeliaJake, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Call from the agent market

I was sitting last evening in my favorite spot in the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse when my cell phone rang. Thank God for cell phones or I would have been forced to bestir myself from my spot and go to the phone. Imagine the inconvenience. Anyway, it was Quentin calling from a small Asian market, but, of course, given my previous problem distinguishing between Secret Agent Man and Secret Asian Man, I had to make certain he was not calling from an agent market, which I suppose would be a place that provides the Maxwell Smart’s of the world.

He – Quentin, not Max who somehow fumbled his way into this discourse – was looking for lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves, produce with which I have no familiarity. So he asks if my computer is nearby and I then look up pictures of the stuff. I inquired why he didn’t ask a worker there, but he said he had and they didn’t speak English. Apparently there were pictures of produce so I told him to grab an Asian and point, but he didn’t think that would be productive.

I describe kaffir lime leaves, telling him it looks like grass, then realizing I am looking a picture of a knife next to cut-up lime leaves (kaffir, don’tcha know.) Thinking, “Oh,” I tell him to forget that and visualize two shiny green hedge-like leaves, one coming out of the other in an end to end fashion. Not managing too well with this, we go on to lemongrass, which I told him looked like the weedy reedy grass that you see along ponds around here. This is also not too helpful.

Finally, I tell him that his mother, me, is a 60 year old product of a childhood in Northern Indiana where all I knew was a menu that came from the north of Europe. Okay, we did have spaghetti, but I’ve learned long pasta and a bland tomato sauce isn’t necessarily true spaghetti. I didn’t have pizza until well into my teens – probably at some college summer program for high schoolers. The closest to Chinese food I got was rice. To tell the truth, I suppose it was quite a long time before I realized not everyone ate staples of meat and potatoes and fuit pies.

Now he’s talking Thai food. He and his dad, Der Bingle, like it. I went to a Thai restaurant once in San Diego – it was a storefront jobbie with white tablecloths, an acoustic ceiling and absolutely no AmeliaJake type of atmosphere. And, of course, no meat and potatoes. Right then I knew, knew for a fact, there was no way I would ever be cosmopolitan.

For several minutes we wandered down the aisle of the asian market via cell phone and finally he checked out; he remarked it was the last time he was going there alone.  I suppose the clerks put their heads together and watched him go, this stranger in a strange land.

I don’t know how the Thai soup turned out. He wanted it to be spicy enough to clear out his sinuses.  And I don’t know much about leaves in food. Heck, when I was a kid, we would have been appalled to see a leaf in the stew. And, just a couple of years ago, we all gather round to watch the bay leaf float in the homemade hotdog soup. Ahhhhhhh….. Oooooooooh. And we scandlously wondered, “What if we put in two?”

Just Me - AmeliaJake

This is not what I expected

I am somewhat of a patsy for the “what are you” quizzes and so I took the “what leader?” are you and “what movie are you?” sections. I am not going to tell you what leader I am. The quizzes allow you to choose how many questions to answer: 9, 18, 27 or 45. On the movie one, I first answered 18 and discovered I was


Then when I answered with 45 questions, I am