Monday, August 16, 2004

Pull My Taffy

I’m still having internet connectivity problems at home and it’s EAF budget season at work which means I’m up to my ass in shiny new grant submissions, hundreds of projects I have to evaluate and track in the next six weeks, so I’m not able to share any of the more substantial ditherings I’ve been keeping down in my spiderhole.  Instead, here are a few random thoughts about some candy.

Last night I wandered into a 7-11 with a friend and we discovered, to our elation and detriment, that they were having a sale on Old Fashion Taffy - one of my all-time favorite candies.  I convinced Dave that we needed six sheets of it, each of which is merely a single serving anyway.  I wish I’d saved a wrapper so I could describe it but the sugar rush was way too intense for me to focus on that kind of detail at the time, and all I can tell you about them is this:

* These are easier to eat if kept in the fridge.  They unpeel more smoothly and snap satisfyingly into little bite-sized chunks - if they’re at room temperature, they’re gooey and sticky.  Then again, there are occasions when gooey and sticky is exactly what my sweettooth demands. 

* Two of these is enough for me, even when I’m really jonesing for them.  It’s pretty intense stuff. 

* The taffys came in different colors, which we understood to reflect different flavors: orange, yellow, purple and red.  Turns out these colors actually were the flavors.  Though usually I think of “yellow” as “banana” and “red” as “cherry” and “purple” as “grape” and “orange as “the fruit called orange,” these were actually the flavor of artifical candy colors.  Dave’s comment about the purple: “Hm, that’s pretty weird.” About the yellow: “This is really artificial.” They are the very flavors I remember from my childhood, and they never tasted like fruit.  They taste like fruit-flavored candy, and that seems about right. 

And because it’s a good way to maintain my nice vacationey feelings, I’ll leave you with a few of my nearly-trademarked Tropical Tidbits:

* A beach of green sand at the southernmost point in the US, which we reached by four-wheeling over a very rough, sometimes almost unreadable, dirt track for miles… at the end, the water was rich vibrant blue and the sand a soothing soft olive, and a young man stood with his back to the dramatically grooved and caved rockface that cradled the beach, playing jazz standards and smooth improvisations on a gleaming golden saxaphone.

* Kayaking across Kokocrispy Bay to snorkle at the Cap’n Crunch Memorial, and returning home on the scenic route with a brief pause to catch our breaths at the Kellipuki Rest Area.

* Problem: you’ve just overcooked the best ahi you’ve ever bought.  Solution: add rum liberally to ice.  Drizzle in some guava juice for color.  Consume and repeat until ruined fish returns to irrelevancy. 

* Biological oddity: it wasn’t just me.  Everybody was peeing more in Hawaii than ever before in our respective lives. 

* Special personal moment: Falling on my ass, really hard, twice, at the same exact part of the same mossy boatramp, on the same exact part of my right cheek, on the same day, and then, as I try to regain my equilibrium and dignity, having a total stranger make a sympathetic comment.  Dude, you should see me in my normal shoes on dry ground.  When I’m not in swimfins ankle-deep in algae and the coursing tide, I do pretty well staying vertical.  Meantime, that was a nice deep bruise I developed on the ol’ okole. 

See you again soon.  God willing, the computer will be humming cheerfully by then and I’ll be able to express myself more fully.  If not, I guess you’ll just get another crappy pointless post.  You know, like usual.