Author Archives: Leanne Waldal

Mix and Be Merry

Two years ago I concocted a cocktail that I dubbed “Winter Tale,” and this year I went searching on the internet for a cranberry vodka recipe and rediscovered my own post.

Every year Moya, my wife, makes a music mix for friends. This year she named her mix “2011 Saints.”

I’ve mixed up 5 different cocktails and bottled them to give to friends, along with Moya’s music mix. Together they are the perfect party starter – a music mix, and a pre-mixed cocktail. For most of these, just add ice and stir or shake and strain!

Mixed Cocktails and Mixed Music

(left to right) Douglas Fir Gimlet, Winter Tale, Honey Saffron Liqueur, Pear Rosemary Cocktail, Autumn Leaves (and, yes, that's a magazine tree in the background!)

Here are the recipes:

Douglas Fir Gimlet (from New York Times)
Winter Tale (my concoction)
Honey Saffron Liqueur (from Eat Boutique)
Pear Rosemary Cocktail (from Bi-Rite Market)

Autumn Leaves (I don’t remember where I found this)
Combine in a mixing glass, stir, strain, garnish with orange peel:
3/4 oz Apple Brandy (I used Laird’s)
3/4 oz Rye (I used Bulleit)
3/4 oz Carpano Antica (or sub other sweet veromuth)
1/2 oz Yellow Chartreuse
1 dash Cinnamon Tincture (fill a small jar with cinnamon sticks, add vodka to cover, let soak 2 weeks, strain and refrigerate)

Upside down sideways photos

When I take a photo (so rarely) with my point and shoot camera, or with my DSLR (even more rarely), usually the photos are taken right-side-up or just sideways because a point and shoot or DSLR has a button on top.

When I take a photo (almost always) with a smartphone, usually the photos are never right-side-up because a smartphone has a button on screen that moves as the hardware is rotated.

Droid1 has a hardware button for the camera on one side (Droid3 lost the button), and the iPhone4s can use the volume button for the camera, but I rarely use those buttons. I pickup a smartphone, turn it on, open the camera app, and take a photo from any every which way.

Then I post these photos, from a Droid or iPhone, to Flickr, to Facebook, to Twitter, and, frustrated sigh, the photo is posted upside down or sideways.

So I go to the app or the web site, on my smartphone, and there’s never ever a feature option to rotate the photo. (STILL AFTER ALL THESE YEARS OF MOBILE APPS!)

Then I go to the “full standard” web site for twitter, facebook, flickr, etc, and navigate it on my smartphone to rotate the photo. This takes a while. Flickr, in particular, has memory loss and asks me to login repeatedly. Facebook doesn’t always recognize my finger taps.

Any mobile or smartphone app with photos, simply because it is for smartphone use, and because smartphones are easily spun around in our hands, should have a rotate button.

Please.

Great-Uncle Carl

My great-uncle Carl Rasaka died recently. I’ve slowly been organizing digital scans of my grandma’s photos and have a few great photos of him. My memories of him are from the farm where he and his wife Colleen lived in rural Oregon, the elevator (so fancy!) in their house, the farm tractors, the big tree, their collection of Dr Seuss books which I devoured whenever I visited them, and the always delicious cookies that Colleen would make.

When I was a kid I loved that part of my mom’s family – my great-aunts and great-uncles who all lived in various parts of Yamhill County in Oregon, mostly on farms or hilltops with lots of trees to climb and views to see and tree fruit to pick in the summer.

His daughter Julie (my mom’s cousin) commented on my blog a week ago. I was thinking of him because of her comment, and because of my digital photo organization project and the dashing photos I have of him in his younger years.

1970 Carl Rasaka

1970 Carl Rasaka

1944 Carl Rasaka

1944 Carl Rasaka

1954, Carl and Colleen with Baby Julie

1954, Carl and Colleen with Baby Julie

1992, Carl & Colleen Rasaka

1992, Carl & Colleen Rasaka

It’s not CalTrain

After dropping my kid off at camp for the day, I got on the 22 Fillmore and walked to the back of the bus and sat down.

Back of the 22 Fillmore bus

Back of the 22 Fillmore bus

A few stops later a guy gets on and sits next to me and starts taptapping on an iPhone with a shattered and cracked glass screen. He’s wearing a buttondown shirt and carrying a laptop bag.

Behind me 3 people are talking about where and what Ottawa is. They’re wearing tshirts and baggy shorts. Then they notice the guy next to me taptapping on cracked shattered iPhone screen. They ask him how it happened.

“I put it in my shirt pocket and leaned over. I’ve dropped it a lot before and it’s never cracked. Now I have to call Apple. At least it still works.”

I jump into the conversation with the story about the skydiver who jumped out of a plane with his iPhone in his pocket and it fell out of his pocket (while he was falling from the sky) and landed on the roof of a building and broke, but the GPS still worked and he was able to find his phone.

Now there are a few more people joining in the conversation, contributing stories of cracked iPhone screens and where/how to get them fixed and why not to bother asking Apple to fix it and how the screen gets suction-cupped off and replaced.

“Oh, man, I know where you can get that fixed, don’t call or send it to Apple. Go to Cupertino,” says one of the baggy shorts tshirt guys.

People around me laugh and chuckle. “No, seriously,” says baggy shorts tshirt guy, “Cupertino is a shop downtown on Battery St and they can fix any iPhone fast and cheap. Just Yelp it. They have good reviews on Yelp. Yelp knows everything.”

As people start to get off at various stops, they all wish each other a good day and good luck with the cracked screen, and thanks. Kindness and good wishes are everywhere.

When I got off the bus I wondered why the baggy shorts tshirt guys didn’t just use their smartphones to look up the answer to where/what Ottawa is.

MUNI has the best stories and entertainment along with smells and obscenities.