Hot Pants Shaker Scene

Peggi buying cabbage at the Public Market in Rochester, NY
Peggi buying cabbage at the Public Market in Rochester, NY

I loaded my mother-in-law’s SUN though SAT, MORN, NOON, EVE, BED pill container like we do every weekend but today I felt like I was loading an Advent calender. We used to have those things in our house when we were growing up and most of the little doors would be open by now. This one though has no surprises unless you forget what medicine you’re taking every day and my mother-in-law just may fall into that category.

We started the day at the Public Market downtown. I love this place especially the way it seems to draw equally from all sub cultures of the city. Red peppers were in abundance for some reason and local cabbage, pears, onions, potatoes and apples were everywhere. Christmas trees were fifteen dollars and every sort of nic nac  or common junk drawer product was there, fresh off a Chinese container. One of the fish guys tried to talk Peggi into buying an eel by wiggling it at us. “They’re good in soup”, he said. We had read a rave review of Barry from Fair Game Foods’ pastrami sandwiches in City Newspaper so waited in line for one of those and took it to our car where we listened to a cd of Margaret Explosion with Phil Marshall from last week.

It started snowing on the way home and it looked like a shaker scene. We are up to about fifteen inches of the white stuff now. We had arranged to ski with Rick and Monica so we headed right out in to the woods. Rick led the way and took us across the golf course and down a few thrill seeker hills. When we got back home we built a fire and put James Brown’s “Hot Pants lp on.

There are a few things in the running for tonight. Bob Henrie and the Goners are at Abilene and Watkins and the rapiers are doing their Christmas show at the Flipside. We might try to do both.

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Rick & Monica Envy

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s fireplace insert. But we did and today we put a down payment on one. In fact, it is the same one as Rick and Monica’s. We shopped around a bit. We looked at “Fireplace Fashions” and drove by “House of Fire.” That name sort of bothers me. It’s not what I want to picture when starting a fire in my living room. Rick and Monica recommended Williamson Hardware so that’s where we did our business. But then Monica told us she didn’t like Christmas and the next day we look out there and see white lights on some trees in front of their house. We dealt with the owner of Williamson Hardware. He does the installs as well. He is up at four, runs three to five miles a day and also does abstract photographs. He showed us one on his Blackberry. He is having a show at Image Gallery in April.

Our house was built in the forties and the fireplace is big. We have chopped and burnt a lot of wood. But it doesn’t exactly heat up the house or even the room. You have to sit right on top of it to feel the warmth. It drains heat from the house while we are having a fire and and the opening continues to drain heat while we aren’t. Didn’t they know this in the forties? Maybe energy was so much cheaper that it was a smaller issue. Wood burning fireplace inserts are expensive.

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