Hot Jello Biscuit!

The title for today’s post came from a really absurd conversation at a dinner party I went to last night.  I won’t even go into how we came up with the phrase, only that it sounds like a fantastic expletive for happy occasions (e.g., “Hey, I won the lottery!  Hot Jello biscuit!”).  I’m hoping it’ll catch on.

And just to keep this post in the absurd category (today’s post is brought to you by Dadaism), I was at Wawa this afternoon getting some coffee, where I saw a man at a sort of a booth trying to sell some sort of raffle promotion for the store.  The booth had a hand-written sign taped to it, saying, “Ask me about free gas.”

I had to hold my tongue.  So many jokes, so little time.

What’s in a Name?

Even before I got married, people had issues with my name. I’ve had folks misspell, mispronounce, and just plain misunderstand my name, and over the years, I’ve been pretty tolerant about the whole thing. After all, I figure, “Maren” is not exactly a common name, and neither is “Montalbano.” So I give folks a break and patiently wait for them to figure it out. But now that I’ve gotten married and changed my name, it’s gotten even worse, and I’m starting to get a little mad.

Before I get into this diatribe, I do want you to know that I thought long and hard about changing my name. After all, Maren Montalbano is a brand, and I’ve spent many years making sure people remember that name and associate it with me and my face. But, on the other hand, I wanted to make sure the world knew that I was someone’s wife now. I’m a Mrs., not a Ms. or a Miss, and after having addressed multiple invitations for the wedding, I realize that it’s always easier when you can write “Mr. & Mrs. So-and-So” rather than “Mr. So-and-So & Ms. Such-and-Such.”

So I hit on a compromise that MANY women take. I would keep my maiden name, but move it over to my middle name, so that I would now, legally, become Maren Montalbano Brehm. My professional name, my “stage name,” if you want to call it that, is still Maren Montalbano, and always will be. That way, if I get a check written out to Maren Montalbano, the bank won’t have too hard a time guessing that it’s really me, since both my middle and last names will be on the account. Sounds simple enough, right? Plus, it’s what the majority of women do when they change their names.

The trouble started when I went to Italy last year, and the travel agency who was arranging the tour messed up my name on the plane tickets, putting “Montalbano-Brehm, Maren” down as my name on the ticket, when my passport, which was correct, said “Brehm, Maren Montalbano.” You’d think that would be an easy enough error to correct, but I was held up at every single airport I went through on that trip because my ticket didn’t match my passport. When I tried to correct it through the airline, they said they would make a note on the passenger list, but I STILL got held up at the airport. The fine people at TSA (and the French equivalent) clearly thought that I was trying to pull a fast one on them by adding a hyphen to my name.

Once home, it actually took several tries to change my bank accounts and credit cards. One credit card couldn’t be bothered to change my name even after I sent them a copy of my marriage certificate, a letter signed by me, and a copy of my driver’s license to prove it was me, so I have since canceled the card.

The township where I live has such bad record-keeping that they not only have my name wrong, but our address wrong as well! We found out last year that the township had been sending property tax bills for years to Ray’s previous address. When we received a zoning permit for replacement of an AC unit that we didn’t ask for, I wrote the township a very detailed letter, returning the zoning permit, along with a copy of the deed to the house, our marriage certificate, my driver’s license, and asked very politely for them to change their records. This year a similar thing happened again, so I went down to the municipal offices and made sure their databases were changed (clearly they don’t share data between departments).

Earlier this year, when it came time for us to give our receipts and reports to our tax accountant, I included a copy of our marriage certificate (which states very clearly what my new name is!) so that he could file our taxes with the correct name. Our taxes came back, and every single page said “Montalbano, Maren W.” We pointed out the problem to the accountant, who said, “Just get some white-out and change the name on the papers yourself.” So I did.

Now we’re getting our tax refunds, and if that isn’t a botched up mess, too! NY State sent me a check for “MAREN MONTALBANOBREHM,” which is a new variation — pretty creative, if you ask me. NJ State sent a check made out to “Montalbano Brehm” with no reference to “Maren” at all. Now, I’m not concerned that I won’t be able to deposit these checks, but how difficult is it for people to figure this out? Haven’t women been doing this for centuries?

On the other side of the spectrum, I am singing in a concert at my church this weekend, and all the posters and flyers have been printed with my name listed as “Maren Brehm.” I know I had been a little flexible with the posting of my name in the church bulletins, since I figured this group of people, since they knew I had just been married, would expect my name to change. And my choir director even asked me how to list my name, and I had told him, “Either ‘Maren Montalbano’ or ‘Maren Montalbano Brehm.’” I think he took this to mean I didn’t mind being listed as “Maren Brehm,” and, it turns out, I do. Professionally, at least.

I do realize I’ve made it a little bit difficult by insisting on keeping my maiden name as my professional name. So, mea culpa , mea culpa , and maybe I deserve a little bit of the grief I’m getting. But there are only three names to deal with, people. Don’t hyphenate it, ask me before you put my name on an advertisement, and you’ll be fine. It’s not like I’ve got a name like Tarquin Fintimlinbinwhinbimlim Bus Stop F’tang F’tang Ole Biscuit-Barrel. Then, I think, I would be in a lot more trouble.

Random thoughts

I sang at a wedding today…it was a beautiful ceremony, lovely couple, gorgeous day. But after having gone through my own wedding so recently, I now notice all the things that could have gone better had the bride & groom (or maybe the wedding planner?) thought the details through just a little bit more.

The ceremony took place outside, and the bridesmaids and brides had to traverse a very long lawn to get to the site. They did so in 4-inch stiletto heels, all of them. I almost wanted to say kudos to them, but I was too busy laughing (on the inside, of course!) as their heels accumulated rose petals like those pointy canes that pick up trash while they marched down the rose-carpeted aisle. The bride had to be held up by her parents as she walked because she kept falling into the soft ground. NOTE TO ALL FUTURE BRIDES: if you are going to get married outside, make sure you (and your bridesmaids) choose appropriate footwear.

The ceremony music was untraditional, for sure, which made me happy, because I got to sing something other than Schubert’s Ave Maria . Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for a bride who knows what she wants with regard to music, rather than the standard, "What do you suggest?" Because that’s when I end up with Ave Maria or Panis Angelicus or one of the oldies but goodies. I do like a little change now and again, just to spice things up. But whoever picked the music didn’t really think of the timing or the appropriateness of some of the selections. The groomsmen entered to a somewhat menacing Janá?ek piece played by the string quartet, and they were lined up at the front and ready to go before the piece was even halfway over. And my solo, "Ich habe genug" (Bach Cantata, BWV 82), would have been 8 minutes long before we cut it down to a mere 3′50" during the rehearsal immediately prior to the ceremony. SECOND NOTE TO FUTURE BRIDES: make sure you know what all your music selections sound like and how long everything is going to take.

Other than that, everything else went pretty smoothly. There were some problems with the wireless microphones, but I didn’t need a mic in that intimate setting, so I personally didn’t care one way or the other.

In other news, I’ve actually had enough time on my hands that I’ve been surfing around Digg.com (dangerous, I know) and came across this picture , which had the title "Never piss off an engineer." Priceless.

Aha!

I just knew it was the Ground Chuck! I caught him snacking on leftovers over in the compost pile.

And so I decided to take a video of his dastardly doings:

The Case of the Missing Lettuce

I’ve been fortunate enough these past few days to have a little more time on my hands than usual…so much so that I can actually spend time puttering about in the garden, as you can see from my previous post.

A friend started too many tomato plants from seed (despite my warnings that there was something about NJ that makes tomatoes thrive!), and now she’s been giving away her surplus plants. Good news for me, since I’ve been spending all my money at the nursery buying sweet woodruff and tansy and pennyroyal because I’m a big herb geek. As a result, my herb collection is growing nicely, but my vegetable garden is somewhat lacking. These new tomato plants make up for that.

You may be wondering about the red stuff under the plants: that’s red mulch, and it’s supposed to reflect red light back to the plants, which apparently makes the plant produce more tomatoes. I’ve never used the stuff before, so we’ll see…I did need some mulch, though, because weeds in my garden are vicious! And while I was buying tomato ladders, I figured I’d try some of this stuff and see how it works out.

I haven’t been completely negligent with the vegetables; I did buy some Boston lettuce to fill out my little kitchen herb garden outside the back door. I figured that was a good place to put it because if I ever felt the hankering for a salad, all I’d have to do was walk five steps out the door and satisfy my urge for roughage. However, as I was tending to my plants this morning, I noticed that someone…or something…had pilfered my lettuce!

At first, I thought it might have been another mistake by the overzealous weed-wacking lawn guy who destroyed my herb garden last year, but he’s the whole reason I put the little white fence up. Surely, I thought, even he would think twice before going inside a clearly designated growing area before laying waste to all things leafy and green.

And then I took a closer look. This looked to be the work of a smaller animal, perhaps one with a certain amount of intelligence and strength, but not a very good capacity for jumping over fences, because as you can see from the picture (if you click on the pic, you can get a closer view), the fence has been pulled out of the ground, and clearly with a certain amount of force, since Ray and I made sure those things were good and stuck in the ground.

Could it be one of the cats? Somehow I highly doubt it. Squirrels? They are pests, and omnivores to boot, but why wouldn’t they just jump over the fence instead of picking it up? An opossum? They, too, are pests, but I think they would rather just root through garbage or eat leftover cat food rather than go through the trouble of pulling up the fence. Besides, I’m not sure they’re smart enough or strong enough to pull up the fence.

My guess? A groundhog. We do have a resident groundhog in our neighborhood; Ray and I call it the “ground chuck” because I keep confusing the name groundhog with woodchuck (they both refer to the same animal, by the way, and yes, I realize that ground chuck is something one usually finds at the supermarket). Our Ground Chuck has been known to munch on the dandelions in our yard, which certainly has endeared him (or her?) to us. I know they do eat snails and grubs and insects, too, though, so they’re still beneficial animals to my garden, and I’m not inclined to go on the offensive with this guy.

I guess my only option is to either plant a whole lot of lettuce and hope there will be some left for me (doubtful) or just not plant lettuce and let Ground Chuck feast on the dandelions. We have plenty of those, for sure.

Getting all crafty

So I made a new friend over the past couple weeks. She’s a new addition to The Crossing, and she is fantastic! We have tons of things in common, especially the fact that we both really like to play with arts and crafts.

Anyway, she’s got this blog, and I’ve been following it and marveling at all the stamps she makes, when I realized that I make stuff like that too! Only I did a whole lot of it for my wedding, and then I stopped because I got busy…like I always do.

I showed her a project I did for my wedding last year, and she really liked it. She said she’d post it on her blog, so I said I’d put the template up on my blog for any of you who might want to do this project yourself.

This project is a wedding program that I turned into a fan (I originally got the idea because I knew it was going to be hot out there in Hawaii, and I thought, “Hey, let me stick the program on a Popsicle stick, and then folks can fan themselves during the ceremony.” But the more I worked on it and researched it, the more I liked the idea of a folding fan with panels. So I modified a template that I found on DIYBride and played around with it on Adobe Photoshop until I could get the right width and angles. It was actually tricky coming up with something that was thin enough to fold down and wide enough to hold all of the text.

Here is one panel:

I then played around in Quark Express and figured out a way to fit three panels on an 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper so that I could print it out on my printer. The font I used is Aramis, which is a free font.

This is the Quark file.

Once I printed it out on card stock (it’s been a year since I did this, so I can’t remember what weight I used! I do know the thickest weight will not go through a standard inkjet, so go at least one step down), my husband and I went through the arduous task of cutting the panels out and arranging them in order (as a side note, I didn’t think this was going to take very long…after all, we only had 35 guests! But I didn’t take into consideration that each fan had 9 panels each, so there was a lot more cutting going on in front of the TV than I’d care to admit).

We punched a hole in the bottom of each panel and then used a brad to attach all 9 panels together. We originally tried to use a grommet, but all that did was hold the pieces so tightly together that they didn’t move at all. So the next best thing was a brad, and we also threaded a little ribbon through the hole as well so our guests could swing them daintily from their wrists, if they so desired.

So there you are! Have fun.

More nerdism

When I put up that link to rejected Star Wars toy ideas, I neglected to give props to Adam875, who turned me onto the link. Thanks, Adam875.

Tonight, Ray, as both of us got in his car, turned on a Weird Al song that I’d never heard before (although apparently it’s been around for 2 years), but which is now my new favorite song. And hey, is that Seth Green in the video, smacking his ass? Rock on!

Slow fast food

At the end of the day on Friday, Ray called me up and said he was in the mood for greasy chicken for dinner, and that he wanted to stop at KFC on the way home. Since I don’t eat chicken, he wanted to know which of the various carb-tastic sides I wanted him to bring me. I personally was in the mood for some greasy fish, so he decided to swing by home and take me to the combination KFC/Long John Silver’s down the road from our house. (He’s so romantic, isn’t he?)

When we got to the restaurant (and I use that term loosely, of course), and we were surprised to see the place was packed, with at least eight people waiting for their food. Since there was nobody in the cashier line, however, we decided to order. After about five minutes, a skinny, vacant-eyed teenager sporting a name tag saying “Hello my name is Ibn” (real name or typo? Who knows?) showed up at the cash register, stared at me while I ordered an L1 combo and an eight-piece crispy bucket (all chicken, specified Ray), then slowly poked a few buttons on his screen and absent-mindedly handed the receipt to me, at which point we joined the throngs by the pick-up counter.

After a few minutes, I looked at the receipt to double-check our number and where we were in line, when I noticed that while Ibn the Cashier Wonder had entered Ray’s order in, my L1 combo was nowhere on the ticket. I made my way back to the now abandoned cash register (Ibn was now wandering aimlessly through the kitchen with a pair of tongs in his hand) to correct the mistake, when a woman over at the pick-up counter says loudly, “Excuse me, we’ve been waiting for our food for a half hour. Can you tell me what the hold-up is?”

A half hour? I looked again at the workers in that kitchen, where the mean age was probably 16.5. Ibn was still wandering around with his tongs like a lost child, there was a guy on the chicken detail who didn’t seem to be really paying attention to the orders coming in. There was another guy way at the back pushing a broom around, but he didn’t really seem to be accomplishing the whole cleaning part of the job. There was a girl running the fry station, but when the alarm kept going off, she simply shut it off without taking anything out of the fryer. The girl at the drive-through window looked like she was actually doing her job, as was the manager (who was probably all of 22 years old).

Ibn clearly saw me waiting at the cash register, and he studiously avoided me. I gave up and figured I didn’t want to confuse them any more than they were already confused, and resigned myself to just eating something else when we got home.

After a few minutes, Half Hour Complaining Woman and her son got their food, and the rest of the crowd around the pick-up counter started to get antsy. The kids in the kitchen started moving a little faster, but their movements were still incredibly inefficient, so nothing was still getting done.

While we waited, two guys came in, waited at the cash register for about ten minutes without anyone acknowledging them, and finally left. Another gentleman showed up and put his order in, but he had obviously been there before, because he brought a book to read while he waited.

Ray remarked that he’d never had any problems with this place, but now that it changed from just a KFC to a KFC/Long John Silver’s, they now had two menus to deal with, and that must just be too much for them to handle.

Finally, the manager gave up trying to follow the orders on the screen and just started asking people what they had ordered so that she could fill them. Ibn chose this point to get helpful and asked Ray what he had ordered. “Eight piece,” Ray shouted over the din. Ibn blinked and turned away. I tried to get Ray to go up to the counter and show the manager his ticket, but Ray wouldn’t budge.

Another eternity later, the manager yelled, “Did somebody order a 12 piece crispy?”
Ray raised his hand and said, “Well, eight piece, but yeah.” The manager, clearly frazzled at this point, slapped a top on the bucket and handed the whole thing to him. We got out of there in a hurry.

I took another look at our receipt and realized that we, too, had been there for a half hour. That’s not fast food; that’s slow food.

Ray felt really bad that I never got to have my greasy fish, so he took me to Taco Bell (okay, there’s no greasy fish there, but it’s still junk food, and that’s kind of what we were both craving). We still had to wait a little bit for our food (10 minutes instead of 30 minutes), but the kitchen did seem much more organized. Unfortunately, my food was pretty inedible…I mean, more so than regular fast food…but at least we got it in less time.

When we got home to eat our food, Ray took a look inside the bucket of chicken and realized there were only 7 pieces of chicken in his 8-piece order. We chalked it up to the level of education these kids had been getting. Willingboro Township (where the KFC is) has the worst public schools in the state of NJ…so bad, apparently, that the students can’t even count pieces of chicken, much less function well in a minimum wage job that a monkey could do. Thanks a lot, New Jersey.

Crash

Yesterday, the airwaves were filled with dire warnings of a winter storm. It was going to snow, they said, but later it would get cold enough where everything would turn to ice. Now, I’ve weathered a many a winter storm since I moved to the East Coast back in 1992…in fact, my first storm was a Nor’easter in Boston that left the tree branches encased in ice. Beautiful, but very cold and very dangerous.

But until now, I’ve been fortunate enough to not have to drive in a winter storm. Usually by the time the weathermen are predicting the coming of the ice age, I am already well-ensconced in my cocoon of blankets, sipping on hot tea. Not so last night.

I was on my way from work to pick up a little dinner before heading into Philadelphia to sing the roles of Flora and Annina in La Traviata at the High Note Cafe, when I skidded on some black ice and ran into a telephone pole. But it didn’t end there; hitting the pole only sent me back into the street to end up facing the wrong way on the shoulder.

Now, before you start worrying, I wasn’t really going that quickly, so the impact was really not bad at all.  I’m fine, I didn’t hit anyone, and the car doesn’t even have a dent (you’ve gotta love those plastic Saturns!).  But it did shake me up a bit.

After making sure my car was, indeed, okay, I made my way SLOWLY to the place I was planning on grabbing some dinner.  I phoned Ray and told him what happened, and he told me I should ask whether or not the show was still on.  I had never thought of that.  Why would someone cancel a show because of weather?  And why would I not continue on my journey?  I mean, don’t they say “the show must go on” for a reason?  I inwardly guffawed, but I called the guy in charge just to make sure.

The show manager said there was no change, and that the show would go on.  He seemed concerned when I told him I ran into a telephone pole, but not so concerned, obviously, to tell me to go home.  I expected that reaction and ordered my food and studied my music.

About 20 minutes later, Ray called again and told me that NJ emergency management was telling everyone to get off the roads and go home.  He said I should call the show manager again and tell him I wasn’t coming.  Although I was loathe to do it, Ray convinced me by telling me the traffic was so bad that it would have taken me 2-3 hours to make the normally 30-minute trip in (and besides, he said, I was worth a lot more to him in one piece than any money I could have made on this gig).  I called the show manager, who was very clearly upset.  But in the end, he understood, and told me that depending on who showed up, they might just do a concert of highlights from the opera.  Good idea, I thought, as I packed up my things and started my journey home.

In the ten miles between the restaurant and my house, I don’t think I drove faster than 25 MPH.  It’s possible that when I got on the highway, I was cruising at 30, but that was definitely my top speed.  And when I got home, Ray told me he was happy I was safe, and I wrapped myself in my cocoon of blankets and sipped hot tea.

It’s That Time Again

It’s time for change.

Yes, I have now grown bored with my blog theme and uploaded a new one. Let me know what you think…I kind of think the bird is cute, but I have several other themes that I might experiment with, so if you check back in a few days, the look of the site may change.

I’m also writing with some shameless self-promotion, and I do hope you forgive me, because I’m actually really excited about it. I’ve recently been singing with a new choir in Philadelphia called The Crossing, as I’m sure those of you who have been following along my adventures for a while realize. They’re the group I went to Italy with this past summer, and we’ve had a number of really wonderful concerts in the past few months.

This most recent concert, a world premiere of a piece called An Epiphany Vespers by Kile Smith, was very well-received, by the critics and audiences alike. And luckily, the concert was filmed and now available for the entire world to see on YouTube. And so I will show it here.

It’s really hard to see me, since I’m the second person from the left at the very end of the line, but there is a point where the camera zooms in and you can see me at least somewhat.

So if you liked what you saw and heard, and you’d like to be kept in the loop as to what, when, and where we will be performing next, please visit The Crossing’s upcoming concerts list and join the new emailing list.

Oh, hey, did I mention you can make tax-deductible donations to the Crossing as well? At the moment, all the singers are putting their time and extraordinary talent in for the love of the ensemble, friendship, and music, and are only splitting the box office receipts after expenses, so your money would be helping yours truly, if only indirectly.

Okay, I’m done with the shameless self-promotion. The next thing I post will be something much more witty, I promise.