Well, JaBloWriMo has officially come to an end. I'm tired and have to get up earlyish tomorrow, so here's how I'm going to finish: I'll soon have a new-to-me car. Though we didn't hit each other all that hard when I was in that accident a couple of weeks ago, somehow part of the frame of the car got bent, and so the insurance company decided that the thing was totaled and sent us the resale value or whatever. Personally, knowing the amount, I'd have expected that it'd be cheaper to fix the frame, but whatever. I hadn't been driving the car for very long and had no particular affection for it. Still, the outcome's a little startling, and also feels, even if it has no real reason to be, a little embarrassing.
But not as embarrassing as getting tagged with a $185 ticket (yes, that's right: the town court leveled the $100 fine, but New York State added an 85% surcharge on top of it) and presumably three points on my license. You remember - failure to yield right-of-way at an intersection. I'll tell you, the court up there works fast: I sent my guilty plea out on Thursday afternoon, and by Saturday night had the bill for the fine in my hands.
So be careful out there, kids. Turn your radios down and creep up around snowdrifts, lest you find yourself with yet another reason to find a second part-time job.
Anyway, thank God no one was hurt. It could easily have been a lot worse.
I hope to blog fairly often in the coming weeks even though now I don't have to - there're several topics I would gladly have covered if I'd only had the time, which I didn't.
You've been a great audience - good night for now.
1.31.2011
1.30.2011
International Feast, Continued
Two sample plates:
This one (above) was mine. Some of the food you're seeing here (in, unfortunately, no particular order): some kind of enchilada thing (that's the thing on top); some chilled carrots that I think were Middle-Eastern style; something that may have been tabbouleh; an Asian dish involving glass noodles; a pierogi or two; a few of my pelmeni; some coconut rice buried under there; a bit of sauerbraten and spaetzle somewhere; and what I thought was a tiny bit of conch, but it didn't taste fishy, so I'm not really sure. A couple of other little dibs and dabs of things, but I can't remember them. One thing we should do next year is have nametags for the dishes, not just country-of-origin tags.
And here's Andrea's. Of particular interest is the left side of her plate: the bread-looking stuff is Irish soda bread, but on top of it is one of the Welsh cookies (more or less a simpler, but as far as I'm concerned probably better, version of this) made by a ninety-four-year-old woman in our church named Mary (she is very active - gardens, volunteers, all kinds of things). The shiny caramel-colored stuff not far behind those is, I believe, flan. Also among the desserts, though apparently not pictured: madeleines, brought by another parishioner, Carmen - whom, to my surprise, I appear not to have mentioned on this blog before - and who also brought a few pages of Proust and an explanatory note for those who didn't know what they had to do with each other. ("Et ça, c'est pour votre culture générale." Right, Albert?)
So it was good. And afterwards, people played Set (I finally get it! I finally like it!), and ultimately Carrie and Zack and I played some Rock Band today for the first time since December.
This was the last weekend of January. Winter can't last forever, can it?
This one (above) was mine. Some of the food you're seeing here (in, unfortunately, no particular order): some kind of enchilada thing (that's the thing on top); some chilled carrots that I think were Middle-Eastern style; something that may have been tabbouleh; an Asian dish involving glass noodles; a pierogi or two; a few of my pelmeni; some coconut rice buried under there; a bit of sauerbraten and spaetzle somewhere; and what I thought was a tiny bit of conch, but it didn't taste fishy, so I'm not really sure. A couple of other little dibs and dabs of things, but I can't remember them. One thing we should do next year is have nametags for the dishes, not just country-of-origin tags. 
And here's Andrea's. Of particular interest is the left side of her plate: the bread-looking stuff is Irish soda bread, but on top of it is one of the Welsh cookies (more or less a simpler, but as far as I'm concerned probably better, version of this) made by a ninety-four-year-old woman in our church named Mary (she is very active - gardens, volunteers, all kinds of things). The shiny caramel-colored stuff not far behind those is, I believe, flan. Also among the desserts, though apparently not pictured: madeleines, brought by another parishioner, Carmen - whom, to my surprise, I appear not to have mentioned on this blog before - and who also brought a few pages of Proust and an explanatory note for those who didn't know what they had to do with each other. ("Et ça, c'est pour votre culture générale." Right, Albert?)So it was good. And afterwards, people played Set (I finally get it! I finally like it!), and ultimately Carrie and Zack and I played some Rock Band today for the first time since December.
This was the last weekend of January. Winter can't last forever, can it?
1.29.2011
I Got'cher Blurry Pictures Right Here
A few shots from Carrie's and my meat-filled cooking spree for the International Feast:
This, the best-quality shot of the bunch (I think I took it on my phone-camera's "food" setting...yes, in fact, it does have a "food" setting, which just shows you how many cooking blogs there must be out there these days!), is of some of the ingredients for Carrie's contribution, a South African dish (kind of in the meatloaf family) called bobotie (pronounced buh-BOH-tee; from what I can tell, you should pronounce the T instead of turning it into a D), being browned. Carrie's the one holding the spatula/spoon, which may be the one Tim made and gave to me, I think my senior year at AU.
This is what it looks like after it's had stuff put on it and it's been baked. On top so far are raisins and chutney, and I think curry powder went into the dish. Still to come: some kind of eggy topping as well.
Changing the view, here's the dough for pelmeni. You mix flour, salt, water, and eggs, as I did in one batch; or you can substitute milk for the water and add a little vegetable oil, as I did in another.
And these are the almost-finished pelmeni; I didn't get a shot of the filling, which is ground beef, ground pork, finely-minced onion, and salt and pepper, all mixed together. Once the pelmeni look more or less like they do in this picture, you can boil them right away, toss them in a little (or more) melted butter, and serve them with a dollop of sour cream or a mixture of mustard and vinegar. Carrie and I did that for dinner (we went the sour-cream route, topping-wise). Or, if you don't want to cook them right away because you can't serve them right away - like if you need to take a bunch of them to church tomorrow - you can freeze them uncooked and then just boil them from frozen.
By the way, as predicted, these really did take me a heck of a lot of time. Granted that some of this wasn't mixing or assembly time; I also boiled some pelmeni up for dinner, washed dishes, cleaned up the ground meat germs I'd probably strewn across the kitchen, checked my e-mail and Facebook from my iPod, gave my undivided attention to "News from Lake Wobegon," and probably did a couple of other things as well. That said, in the kitchen today I got through an hour of podcast material from church (an interesting thing I'd missed while I was gone last weekend), a respectable amount of All Things Considered, both hours' worth of A Prairie Home Companion, all but the last couple of minutes of Says You! (my iPod ran out of juice at around 8:57), and whatever music Carrie was playing. It took a long time. But the nice thing was that it didn't feel like a long time. It was a surprisingly-satisfying way to spend most of a Saturday.
And if you like those pictures, just wait 'til you see the ones I hope to take tomorrow of the feast in all its multicultural splendor.
Also, I had leftover meat mixture that I'm making into meatballs right now, so I should go and attend to those.
This, the best-quality shot of the bunch (I think I took it on my phone-camera's "food" setting...yes, in fact, it does have a "food" setting, which just shows you how many cooking blogs there must be out there these days!), is of some of the ingredients for Carrie's contribution, a South African dish (kind of in the meatloaf family) called bobotie (pronounced buh-BOH-tee; from what I can tell, you should pronounce the T instead of turning it into a D), being browned. Carrie's the one holding the spatula/spoon, which may be the one Tim made and gave to me, I think my senior year at AU.
This is what it looks like after it's had stuff put on it and it's been baked. On top so far are raisins and chutney, and I think curry powder went into the dish. Still to come: some kind of eggy topping as well.
Changing the view, here's the dough for pelmeni. You mix flour, salt, water, and eggs, as I did in one batch; or you can substitute milk for the water and add a little vegetable oil, as I did in another.
And these are the almost-finished pelmeni; I didn't get a shot of the filling, which is ground beef, ground pork, finely-minced onion, and salt and pepper, all mixed together. Once the pelmeni look more or less like they do in this picture, you can boil them right away, toss them in a little (or more) melted butter, and serve them with a dollop of sour cream or a mixture of mustard and vinegar. Carrie and I did that for dinner (we went the sour-cream route, topping-wise). Or, if you don't want to cook them right away because you can't serve them right away - like if you need to take a bunch of them to church tomorrow - you can freeze them uncooked and then just boil them from frozen.
By the way, as predicted, these really did take me a heck of a lot of time. Granted that some of this wasn't mixing or assembly time; I also boiled some pelmeni up for dinner, washed dishes, cleaned up the ground meat germs I'd probably strewn across the kitchen, checked my e-mail and Facebook from my iPod, gave my undivided attention to "News from Lake Wobegon," and probably did a couple of other things as well. That said, in the kitchen today I got through an hour of podcast material from church (an interesting thing I'd missed while I was gone last weekend), a respectable amount of All Things Considered, both hours' worth of A Prairie Home Companion, all but the last couple of minutes of Says You! (my iPod ran out of juice at around 8:57), and whatever music Carrie was playing. It took a long time. But the nice thing was that it didn't feel like a long time. It was a surprisingly-satisfying way to spend most of a Saturday.
And if you like those pictures, just wait 'til you see the ones I hope to take tomorrow of the feast in all its multicultural splendor.
Also, I had leftover meat mixture that I'm making into meatballs right now, so I should go and attend to those.
1.28.2011
Seven Extremely-Quick Takes Friday: The I-Have-Only-Fifteen-Minutes Edition
(Note: This post was finished and submitted on time, but I did go back later to clean up several word choices and such. So if you're curious, not that I expect you to be, about what I actually can accomplish in only fifteen minutes...this isn't fully it.)
One: Laura's birthday party was very nice. Her family seems to believe in doing it up right: despite its not being a milestone birthday for her as far as I know, there were lots of people (both family and friends), the family brought very nice gifts, and there was great food and an ice cream cake straight out of Cold Stone Creamery. As for the conversations, though people tended to gravitate to people they already knew, family talked to friends and friends to family affably, and things were low-key and pleasant.
Two: Having bought at least most of the ingredients for the pelmeni-thon (seriously, it's going to take a while to assemble enough of these babies to feed a respectable-enough percentage of my church. The ingredients themselves are mostly cheap and simple, but to get them into pelmeni form I am going to need counter space, time, and probably a couple of long podcasts or something), there is now a bunch of fresh dill in my refrigerator, just like Natasha used to buy. And I will tell you right now that I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to use it for (probably not the pelmeni themselves). But dill, along with sour cream, is among the Official Ingredients of Authentic Russian Cuisine (though I'm being wry with the capitals, I am also serious; Natasha used to go through a lot of it), so I am sure that it will come in handy somehow.
Three: School's still all right. Not much to say that I haven't said already, I think.
Four: I'm waiting for my Car Talk calendar to actually teach me something major and memorable about cars. In the meantime, though, there've been a couple of really interesting puzzlers. Did you know that some restaurants put a big magnet in the garbage can to catch silverware that's being thrown out by mistake? No word on whether it's supposed to catch said cutlery on the way in or, during the dumping process, on the way back out.
Five: Still on my to-do list: get another sweater to teach in. Some of the ones I have are really too old to be professional enough for my tastes. Hopefully it'll match my brown dress pants, because right now nothing I own does.
Six: I really only included that last item, which is boring even to me, because it's 11:57 and I'm running out of ideas.
Seven: Last night I started the book The Great Typo Hunt, about two guys who went around the country correcting typos on signs (really). It should end up being pretty good.
Okay, I'm done - for more, see Jen!
One: Laura's birthday party was very nice. Her family seems to believe in doing it up right: despite its not being a milestone birthday for her as far as I know, there were lots of people (both family and friends), the family brought very nice gifts, and there was great food and an ice cream cake straight out of Cold Stone Creamery. As for the conversations, though people tended to gravitate to people they already knew, family talked to friends and friends to family affably, and things were low-key and pleasant.
Two: Having bought at least most of the ingredients for the pelmeni-thon (seriously, it's going to take a while to assemble enough of these babies to feed a respectable-enough percentage of my church. The ingredients themselves are mostly cheap and simple, but to get them into pelmeni form I am going to need counter space, time, and probably a couple of long podcasts or something), there is now a bunch of fresh dill in my refrigerator, just like Natasha used to buy. And I will tell you right now that I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to use it for (probably not the pelmeni themselves). But dill, along with sour cream, is among the Official Ingredients of Authentic Russian Cuisine (though I'm being wry with the capitals, I am also serious; Natasha used to go through a lot of it), so I am sure that it will come in handy somehow.
Three: School's still all right. Not much to say that I haven't said already, I think.
Four: I'm waiting for my Car Talk calendar to actually teach me something major and memorable about cars. In the meantime, though, there've been a couple of really interesting puzzlers. Did you know that some restaurants put a big magnet in the garbage can to catch silverware that's being thrown out by mistake? No word on whether it's supposed to catch said cutlery on the way in or, during the dumping process, on the way back out.
Five: Still on my to-do list: get another sweater to teach in. Some of the ones I have are really too old to be professional enough for my tastes. Hopefully it'll match my brown dress pants, because right now nothing I own does.
Six: I really only included that last item, which is boring even to me, because it's 11:57 and I'm running out of ideas.
Seven: Last night I started the book The Great Typo Hunt, about two guys who went around the country correcting typos on signs (really). It should end up being pretty good.
Okay, I'm done - for more, see Jen!
1.27.2011
I've Lost that Blogging Feeling
Though I'm ready for the month-o-blogging to be over, given that my semester has started and I'm therefore consistently short on time to spend on the entries (and, often enough, on material to write about), I would like to propose a new vocabulary word. Could we please riff on the NaNo people and call it a [Beginning-of-Month's-Name]BloWriMo when someone decides to do a month-long blogging streak? As in, since mine happened in January, it would be a JaBloWriMo, and if it had happened last month, it'd be a DecemBloWriMo. I don't know why I've been thinking for days now that that's funny and brilliant, but I more or less have.
(Two potential problems with this scheme: [1] I don't know whether month-long blogging streaks are popular enough to have a name in the first place. [2] What would an April one be? ApeBloWriMo? And how would one distinguish one in June from one in July without making either of them sound dumb? ...Actually, I could get used to saying "JulyBloWriMo." But maybe I should just declare those three months off-limits, since apparently I'm making all the rules here anyway.)
Anyway, school's all right so far. One of my classes looks like it's got a sense of fun (the difficulty will probably be to keep them from talking while I'm talking), while the other appears a little less enthusiastic (though that's not to be wondered at: their class goes from noon to 1:15, and in a windowless room on top of it). I also have a student who's hard of hearing (not all the way deaf - can hear me pretty well a lot of the time, I think), and sometimes (though not all the time) a sign-language interpreter will be coming in to help. One did on Tuesday. It's not as excitingly-distracting as I expected: since he was signing to just that student, his gestures didn't have to be that big, and he sat down and made it fairly one-on-one.
This weekend's excitement (and I mean legitimate excitement, not the "excitement" of grading homeworks and mini-quizzes and finishing next week's lessons) will include Laura R.'s birthday party (on Friday), the aforementioned International Feast (on Sunday), and maybe some Saturday M*A*S*H-watching with Leah. If I didn't mention, I got the entire series on DVD for Christmas (thank you, parents!), but I haven't watched any yet because I've been waiting for her. It's made me wonder just how many episodes I have and haven't seen. It was a big obsession at its peak, but I think I saw a lot of repeats then. I tried to count, maybe this past December, or maybe before, as I looked at an online episode guide. By my estimate, I'd really only gotten through about half of all the episodes there are, but maybe when I get watching some of the unfamiliar-looking ones I'll recognize them. Or maybe I won't. That would be even more exciting.
Okay, time for bed!
(Two potential problems with this scheme: [1] I don't know whether month-long blogging streaks are popular enough to have a name in the first place. [2] What would an April one be? ApeBloWriMo? And how would one distinguish one in June from one in July without making either of them sound dumb? ...Actually, I could get used to saying "JulyBloWriMo." But maybe I should just declare those three months off-limits, since apparently I'm making all the rules here anyway.)
Anyway, school's all right so far. One of my classes looks like it's got a sense of fun (the difficulty will probably be to keep them from talking while I'm talking), while the other appears a little less enthusiastic (though that's not to be wondered at: their class goes from noon to 1:15, and in a windowless room on top of it). I also have a student who's hard of hearing (not all the way deaf - can hear me pretty well a lot of the time, I think), and sometimes (though not all the time) a sign-language interpreter will be coming in to help. One did on Tuesday. It's not as excitingly-distracting as I expected: since he was signing to just that student, his gestures didn't have to be that big, and he sat down and made it fairly one-on-one.
This weekend's excitement (and I mean legitimate excitement, not the "excitement" of grading homeworks and mini-quizzes and finishing next week's lessons) will include Laura R.'s birthday party (on Friday), the aforementioned International Feast (on Sunday), and maybe some Saturday M*A*S*H-watching with Leah. If I didn't mention, I got the entire series on DVD for Christmas (thank you, parents!), but I haven't watched any yet because I've been waiting for her. It's made me wonder just how many episodes I have and haven't seen. It was a big obsession at its peak, but I think I saw a lot of repeats then. I tried to count, maybe this past December, or maybe before, as I looked at an online episode guide. By my estimate, I'd really only gotten through about half of all the episodes there are, but maybe when I get watching some of the unfamiliar-looking ones I'll recognize them. Or maybe I won't. That would be even more exciting.
Okay, time for bed!
1.26.2011
*sigh*
I woke up at eight this morning, a little tired, but with the day stretched out before me.
But now it's past 10:30, and all I've done is eat breakfast, e-mail this semester's ENG 110 syllabi to JoAnn the Friendly English-Department Secretary, and be on the internet.
So I think that this entry will probably count as most or all of my blogging for the day, and I will go and try to accomplish as many of the three remaining necessary things (such as "finish planning tomorrow's lesson") and eleven that'd-be-helpful things (like "go get my hair trimmed" and "maybe apply for a side job") on today's to-do list as possible.
I hope all you have to do, on the other hand, is eat ice pops (if, here in January, you're into that sort of thing) and play.
1.25.2011
Awaited Update
I'm back after having been in Rhode Island between Friday night and Monday morning (no teaching yesterday, so I used it for travel). The time there was good - and kind of quiet, really. I've now seen Brenton Point, which apparently boasts lots of kite-fliers during most of the year, though we didn't see any because it was too calm.
On Monday it was not-many-at-all degrees in New England...but temps were lower still in Binghamton. Leah says that at one point it was expected to go down to -15 (and that's not counting windchill). If it did (even if it didn't, since I can't verify that, it was still at one point down to -6 officially, and someone else I know reports that it got to -10 at his house), that would probably explain why one of Carrie's and my water pipes froze. Or at least we think it did: she was out for the weekend, too, so when we got back, we had as much water running out of the upstairs bathroom's cold tap as we wanted, but no water at all out of the hot tap or the shower. A friend told us that this probably meant a frozen pipe and gave us some suggestions (including kicking up the heat for a while, which we did, to our guilty but definitely-present pleasure). Also, we had some fuse problems that necessitated my going down the cramped and slightly-creepy stairwell into the dusty and slightly-creepy basement, where the fusebox is. But everything turned out just fine, and we woke up this morning with normality restored.
(Winter in Binghamton: your concept of victory-in-life is suddenly redefined as, "My microwave works, my pipes didn't burst, and my shower gives out hot water.")
Speaking of very cold places and things being frozen, I think I'm going to pick Russian food for the Third Annual Good Shepherd International Feast and make pelmeni, since even though I'm not part-Russian, I learned how to make pelmeni from a full-blooded Russian (Natasha, the one I later lived with...how is it that I've never written on this blog about the time she taught me that? Maybe I'll do it soon as a flashback entry). I'll probably have to make them early, here, and then freeze them until I can boil them right at church on Sunday, given that they should really be eaten hot. But I'm looking forward to it all.
And finally, just in case anyone cares, Carrie and I watched the State of the Union tonight, via her Macbook because we don't have a TV, and were amused by the graphics that WhiteHouse.gov had up on its livestream's sidebar-thing to go along with the speech itself. (I think our favorite was the fish-shaped graph that accompanied the bureaucracy example about salmon.)
Now it is my intention to go to bed and sleep for as long as I reasonably can.
PS: "Shill" was not the word I was searching for last entry. I've corrected it.
On Monday it was not-many-at-all degrees in New England...but temps were lower still in Binghamton. Leah says that at one point it was expected to go down to -15 (and that's not counting windchill). If it did (even if it didn't, since I can't verify that, it was still at one point down to -6 officially, and someone else I know reports that it got to -10 at his house), that would probably explain why one of Carrie's and my water pipes froze. Or at least we think it did: she was out for the weekend, too, so when we got back, we had as much water running out of the upstairs bathroom's cold tap as we wanted, but no water at all out of the hot tap or the shower. A friend told us that this probably meant a frozen pipe and gave us some suggestions (including kicking up the heat for a while, which we did, to our guilty but definitely-present pleasure). Also, we had some fuse problems that necessitated my going down the cramped and slightly-creepy stairwell into the dusty and slightly-creepy basement, where the fusebox is. But everything turned out just fine, and we woke up this morning with normality restored.
(Winter in Binghamton: your concept of victory-in-life is suddenly redefined as, "My microwave works, my pipes didn't burst, and my shower gives out hot water.")
Speaking of very cold places and things being frozen, I think I'm going to pick Russian food for the Third Annual Good Shepherd International Feast and make pelmeni, since even though I'm not part-Russian, I learned how to make pelmeni from a full-blooded Russian (Natasha, the one I later lived with...how is it that I've never written on this blog about the time she taught me that? Maybe I'll do it soon as a flashback entry). I'll probably have to make them early, here, and then freeze them until I can boil them right at church on Sunday, given that they should really be eaten hot. But I'm looking forward to it all.
And finally, just in case anyone cares, Carrie and I watched the State of the Union tonight, via her Macbook because we don't have a TV, and were amused by the graphics that WhiteHouse.gov had up on its livestream's sidebar-thing to go along with the speech itself. (I think our favorite was the fish-shaped graph that accompanied the bureaucracy example about salmon.)
Now it is my intention to go to bed and sleep for as long as I reasonably can.
PS: "Shill" was not the word I was searching for last entry. I've corrected it.
1.21.2011
Writing Entirely About Not Writing is Disappointing to One's Readers, Isn't It?
Well, so if I still had a blogging streak, it's broken now: I was busy with a couple of things last night, but it's not like I couldn't have torn myself off Google Reader, when I was on it, for the few minutes necessary to pen (so to speak) a short piece of whatever stuff I've been posting lately.
But I'm not really disappointed, inasmuch as I'm about to spend the next threeish days with limited internet access, so the chances of my streak continuing through the weekend were increasingly-slim anyway. So not only did you not get an entry last night, but I'm essentially saying, at least for the short-term, "Get used to it."
However, because usually I have no excuse to pretend this blog is important enough to have to give my readers something to do in my absence, but now I do, let me pause briefly to plug a blog I follow:
Nursing Adventures in Faith...Around the World!: My friend Laura C., who (predictably enough) is a nurse, has been blogging about her stints with Mercy Ships, which's an amazing organization that sails around in a cruise-ship-or-something that's been converted into a hospital, and they give free medical treatment to poor people in other countries (mostly Africa, I believe) who need it. They're fixing cleft palates, they're straightening curved limbs, they're saving lives. It's funny, it's serious, it's kind of amazing, it's sometimes even astounding. And she explains what she sees with sincerity, deep faith, wryness, and I think something of an understated grace. It's really a wonderful blog; I admire it.
And I hope you have a good weekend.
But I'm not really disappointed, inasmuch as I'm about to spend the next threeish days with limited internet access, so the chances of my streak continuing through the weekend were increasingly-slim anyway. So not only did you not get an entry last night, but I'm essentially saying, at least for the short-term, "Get used to it."
However, because usually I have no excuse to pretend this blog is important enough to have to give my readers something to do in my absence, but now I do, let me pause briefly to plug a blog I follow:
Nursing Adventures in Faith...Around the World!: My friend Laura C., who (predictably enough) is a nurse, has been blogging about her stints with Mercy Ships, which's an amazing organization that sails around in a cruise-ship-or-something that's been converted into a hospital, and they give free medical treatment to poor people in other countries (mostly Africa, I believe) who need it. They're fixing cleft palates, they're straightening curved limbs, they're saving lives. It's funny, it's serious, it's kind of amazing, it's sometimes even astounding. And she explains what she sees with sincerity, deep faith, wryness, and I think something of an understated grace. It's really a wonderful blog; I admire it.
And I hope you have a good weekend.
1.19.2011
But I Don't Have Time to Blog
Not much of an entry tonight: it's past 11, and I teach for real tomorrow, unless there's some major snowstorm brewing that I don't know about.
Today is Joe's 25th birthday, so after the rest of today's business, which included an errand at BCC, as well as some minor car repair (to the one I'm driving right now, not the one that got hit), I made, more or less for him, Holiday Bacon Appetizers, from the Pioneer Woman site, and candied bacon, from a different one. I'll add the links to the recipes tomorrow, when I'll have more time.
I say "more or less" for him partly because Carrie and I stole tidbits, and partly because I wouldn't mind a do-over: the appetizers came out noticeably overcooked, the brown-sugar shell of the candied bacon (despite the color and brittleness of the bacon itself) undercooked. But he ate them anyway, as friends and bacon-lovers are probably wont to do. :)
Happy quarter-century, Joe! I hope somebody makes you a cool XKCD card like you did for me last May.
Today is Joe's 25th birthday, so after the rest of today's business, which included an errand at BCC, as well as some minor car repair (to the one I'm driving right now, not the one that got hit), I made, more or less for him, Holiday Bacon Appetizers, from the Pioneer Woman site, and candied bacon, from a different one. I'll add the links to the recipes tomorrow, when I'll have more time.
I say "more or less" for him partly because Carrie and I stole tidbits, and partly because I wouldn't mind a do-over: the appetizers came out noticeably overcooked, the brown-sugar shell of the candied bacon (despite the color and brittleness of the bacon itself) undercooked. But he ate them anyway, as friends and bacon-lovers are probably wont to do. :)
Happy quarter-century, Joe! I hope somebody makes you a cool XKCD card like you did for me last May.
1.18.2011
How Did it Get to be This Late?
So guess what I got today...a snow day off of my first day at school!
Instead of teaching classes, I:
-tried and failed to make apple-cinnamon-oatmeal pancakes (notes to self: don't add salt as called for in recipe because instant oatmeal already contains it, and either find a better pancake turner or try cooking on lower heat)
-ate a lovely other-pancake breakfast, courtesy of Carrie
-listened to a podcast I wanted to listen to
-talked briefly to Joe via Skype
-vacuumed multiple rooms(!)
-did some work on the MV-104 for the accident (this was more arduous than you'd expect)
-made a couple of productivity-related phone calls
-filled out a voter-registration form so that I can actually vote in the county I've lived in for most of the past three-plus years, rather than one in which I haven't
-did the grocery shopping (though Wegmans has sold my family a few spoiled items over the course of the twentyish years we've been giving them business, I'd like to point out that I did not go to Wegmans today, and I point this out because the place I did go had a brick of cheddar in the dairy case that, though still fully wrapped, had at least three spots of coin-sized, I-think-mostly-bluish-green, flat-out-ugly mold growing on it. I definitely gagged a little. I ultimately took it over to an employee dude for him to dispose of; he seemed repulsed himself by it.)
-made semi-homemade pizza for dinner (bought premade dough for the crust, but didn't get all the bubbles out, so the pizza ended up with these three or four GIANT BUBBLES OF RETRIBUTION - seriously, I've never seen so many get so big - that maybe I should post pictures of if/when Carrie, who took them, sends them to me
-made war cake for dessert (it's a raisin-spice sort of cake that uses no eggs, milk, or butter - hence the name, since it was apparently popular during WWII shortages) - people were over for the Bible study that Ife runs from our house, so it was supposed to be for that, but then people had places to be and left without realizing I'd put it out on the table. So now Carrie and I are going to eat it all by ourselves, which would be a shame if it weren't so tasty.
I was even going to go run another errand, but then I didn't need to.
After that I played Pairs in Pears with Carrie; Joe and Andrea gave it to me for Christmas, but, surprisingly, it hadn't yet been opened. It's fun - from the same making-a-word game "family" as Bananagrams, but faster-paced and requiring different strategies.
By then it was only, what, 9:30? And I was going to let the baked-on pizza crust soak itself loose from the baking sheet for just about fifteen or twenty minutes while I read blogs, then wash it off and go to bed after a day of a respectable amount of productivity.
And instead I must have read blogs for, like, an hour and a half before I actually did go wash the crust off. And then went on Facebook. Yiesh.
And that's why it's 11:40 and I am just now posting this and going to bed. But hey, my semester doesn't start until Thursday, so why not live it up for just a little longer?
Instead of teaching classes, I:
-tried and failed to make apple-cinnamon-oatmeal pancakes (notes to self: don't add salt as called for in recipe because instant oatmeal already contains it, and either find a better pancake turner or try cooking on lower heat)
-ate a lovely other-pancake breakfast, courtesy of Carrie
-listened to a podcast I wanted to listen to
-talked briefly to Joe via Skype
-vacuumed multiple rooms(!)
-did some work on the MV-104 for the accident (this was more arduous than you'd expect)
-made a couple of productivity-related phone calls
-filled out a voter-registration form so that I can actually vote in the county I've lived in for most of the past three-plus years, rather than one in which I haven't
-did the grocery shopping (though Wegmans has sold my family a few spoiled items over the course of the twentyish years we've been giving them business, I'd like to point out that I did not go to Wegmans today, and I point this out because the place I did go had a brick of cheddar in the dairy case that, though still fully wrapped, had at least three spots of coin-sized, I-think-mostly-bluish-green, flat-out-ugly mold growing on it. I definitely gagged a little. I ultimately took it over to an employee dude for him to dispose of; he seemed repulsed himself by it.)
-made semi-homemade pizza for dinner (bought premade dough for the crust, but didn't get all the bubbles out, so the pizza ended up with these three or four GIANT BUBBLES OF RETRIBUTION - seriously, I've never seen so many get so big - that maybe I should post pictures of if/when Carrie, who took them, sends them to me
-made war cake for dessert (it's a raisin-spice sort of cake that uses no eggs, milk, or butter - hence the name, since it was apparently popular during WWII shortages) - people were over for the Bible study that Ife runs from our house, so it was supposed to be for that, but then people had places to be and left without realizing I'd put it out on the table. So now Carrie and I are going to eat it all by ourselves, which would be a shame if it weren't so tasty.
I was even going to go run another errand, but then I didn't need to.
After that I played Pairs in Pears with Carrie; Joe and Andrea gave it to me for Christmas, but, surprisingly, it hadn't yet been opened. It's fun - from the same making-a-word game "family" as Bananagrams, but faster-paced and requiring different strategies.
By then it was only, what, 9:30? And I was going to let the baked-on pizza crust soak itself loose from the baking sheet for just about fifteen or twenty minutes while I read blogs, then wash it off and go to bed after a day of a respectable amount of productivity.
And instead I must have read blogs for, like, an hour and a half before I actually did go wash the crust off. And then went on Facebook. Yiesh.
And that's why it's 11:40 and I am just now posting this and going to bed. But hey, my semester doesn't start until Thursday, so why not live it up for just a little longer?
1.17.2011
Quotidian
I'm trying to decide what to make for my church's annual International Feast in a couple of weeks - everyone's supposed to pick a country and make a dish native to that country. It's meant as a welcome-back for the BU students coming off of Christmas break, many of whom are from non-American cultures (especially Asian), but it also gives us something else we love dearly: an excuse to make and eat delicious food.
Last year, deciding that I ought to make something from a country that's actually part of my heritage, I made bara brith, which is Welsh, and which I've mentioned on this blog before. The year before that I threw heritage fidelity to the wind and made Moroccan chicken-and-lentils. This year I may go Irish, which would also be authentic to my background - or, eschewing all good sense and leaving my past behind again, I may get ambitious and try for Greek. We'll see.
For a joke, at youth group tonight Ife and I told S., one of the girls, that she had to make something from Azerbaijan for the feast (that felt sufficiently obscure), and that her mother had to make something from Mongolia. S., though getting the joke, has taken this as a challenge; she proclaimed to her father, when he came to pick her up, that her mom was going to have to make Mongolian beef, and she herself wanted to bring goat.
(The goat thing is my fault. I'm pretty sure some Greater Middle-Eastern countries are into goat, and I had thought Azerbaijan might be among them, but now that I look online, I'm less sure. However, since apparently goat is the most widely-consumed meat in the world - or at least so says the New York Times article I read - for all I know I could be right after all.)
(S.'s father, I seem to remember, gave her that most parental of skeptical responses: "We'll see.")
On another note, tomorrow is the first day of the new semester. After teaching at 8 AM every day last semester, this semester's midmorning start time seems positively luxurious. But it's time for me to go to bed anyway.
Last year, deciding that I ought to make something from a country that's actually part of my heritage, I made bara brith, which is Welsh, and which I've mentioned on this blog before. The year before that I threw heritage fidelity to the wind and made Moroccan chicken-and-lentils. This year I may go Irish, which would also be authentic to my background - or, eschewing all good sense and leaving my past behind again, I may get ambitious and try for Greek. We'll see.
For a joke, at youth group tonight Ife and I told S., one of the girls, that she had to make something from Azerbaijan for the feast (that felt sufficiently obscure), and that her mother had to make something from Mongolia. S., though getting the joke, has taken this as a challenge; she proclaimed to her father, when he came to pick her up, that her mom was going to have to make Mongolian beef, and she herself wanted to bring goat.
(The goat thing is my fault. I'm pretty sure some Greater Middle-Eastern countries are into goat, and I had thought Azerbaijan might be among them, but now that I look online, I'm less sure. However, since apparently goat is the most widely-consumed meat in the world - or at least so says the New York Times article I read - for all I know I could be right after all.)
(S.'s father, I seem to remember, gave her that most parental of skeptical responses: "We'll see.")
On another note, tomorrow is the first day of the new semester. After teaching at 8 AM every day last semester, this semester's midmorning start time seems positively luxurious. But it's time for me to go to bed anyway.
1.16.2011
After That Long One, This Shorter One
I feel like I may be starting to come down with something, so I'll keep this fairly short. But I'm back in Binghamton, and all the sports teams I rooted for this weekend have won (well, I guess I would have been just as happy if the Seahawks had won - maybe I even wanted them a little. I didn't really decide. Don't tell Erik, who loves the Bears). Man, I'd take a Jets-Packers Super Bowl; if the Jets won, several people I know would be very happy about it; and if the Packers did, my brother would be thrilled. So that's officially what I'm hoping for next weekend.
(Plus, the Pack looked really good yesterday. I can see why people like Aaron Rodgers. Being a Bills fan, I can hardly comprehend team success after the departure of a star quarterback - Doug Flutie was probably the only decent QB we've had in all our post-Jim-Kelly years - but apparently the Packers have made out much better in that kind of thing than we have.)
Also, it turns out that I was already acquainted with the lady in the other car in yesterday's accident. I don't want to disclose information about her without her knowing it, so I won't go into detail, but I definitely remember her, whether or not she remembers me.
That is all.
(Plus, the Pack looked really good yesterday. I can see why people like Aaron Rodgers. Being a Bills fan, I can hardly comprehend team success after the departure of a star quarterback - Doug Flutie was probably the only decent QB we've had in all our post-Jim-Kelly years - but apparently the Packers have made out much better in that kind of thing than we have.)
Also, it turns out that I was already acquainted with the lady in the other car in yesterday's accident. I don't want to disclose information about her without her knowing it, so I won't go into detail, but I definitely remember her, whether or not she remembers me.
That is all.
1.15.2011
Don't Drive Like My Brother's Sister
If you've been looking for one today, I've got your dose of irony right here: I was carrying, among other things, a Car Talk calendar in my passenger seat late this morning...and got myself into a minor auto accident. (But no, the two things were not cause-and-effect.)
I'm fine, save for a small soreness where my neck meets my shoulders, but around 11:45 this morning I was just starting back out to Binghamton, going via a route that I take sometimes when I feel like doing something slightly different, listening to the guy on the phone with Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me! try to get the first question in the Listener Limerick Challenge. The rhyme he needed was clearly "retire," but he wasn't getting it, and even here, on the second read of the limerick, he'd only gotten as far as guessing, "Expire?" as I slowed to a stop at the sign. I must have glanced around the intersection, but my mind was really more on this limerick guy than on what I needed to be doing at that moment.
What I needed to be doing, but didn't, was creeping out a little farther before I started through the intersection, since it was really snowing out there, and a drift was starting to obscure the view to my left, where any car coming would be coming up a hill, such that I wouldn't get a whole lot of warning before it reached the entrance to the intersection.
Also, had I been paying more attention, I would hopefully have realized that this is the intersection that I always half-expect to be a four-way stop, but it isn't. I'd had to stop, but anyone coming through the crossing street wouldn't.
And that's why, when I pulled out into the intersection - which is not a busy one - there was suddenly an SUV-type Jeep about to enter it.
More than once it's almost gotten me into trouble that my first impulse at split-second-decision moments is always to hit the brake. This time it did get me into trouble, because had I just fired right through, I think we would have missed each other, but instead, with a mental gasp, I slowed, then recovered (or maybe just changed my mind? I don't know, and logic often fails me when fast driving decisions come up) and went. I remember a few moments of suspense before the crash, wondering if I'd make it through, and then I could hear myself get hit and felt the push.
I wasn't panicked, didn't feel like I was about to be hurt or killed - the clearest feeling I remember, though I think there were several, was the heart-sink of having failed to avoid the crash...I think some thought closer to this other driver will be mad than anything else. Even as I got hit, it didn't feel like a bad crash or like I'd lost every bit of control, and I'm always in a seatbelt, so I wasn't going to be thrown anywhere. So it was actually a little worse than I'd expected when my car stopped moving and I found myself (still in the car, of course) in the middle of the intersection, facing the opposite direction from which I'd come. It'd only been a 180; I hadn't been in motion for long, comparatively, and I think I'd have known it if I'd done a 540.
The other car was in front of me and over to the left - it'd been pushed to its right from the place where it'd hit me, and seemed to have run into a snowbank at the corner of the streets (not buried there, but at the time I think I'd thought maybe a bit of its front end had gone into it).
At first I thought the lady might be hurt - she was moving there, but she wasn't opening her door. She seemed to be fumbling at the handle. I grabbed my bag (or got out and stood by my door for a second, looking at the other car, then went back for it - I can't remember clearly), not realizing I'd left my keys in the ignition (not that it mattered, since the door was unlocked; I don't think the car was running, but I would notice within the next couple of minutes that the radio had either come back on or had been on all the time), and left the car in a guilty rush. The intersection seemed big as I stepped into the middle of it (again, it wasn't busy - it was in a suburban neighborhood, and no cars had approached since our collision), and in a daze I think I checked for cars before I ran over to where she was.
She was bending over the passenger seat now as though checking something. There was a moment of numb dread in which I thought she might have had a child in there. But then she had a door open, and it was only her.
"I am so sorry," I said. "Are you okay?"
She was, though she couldn't get her driver's-side door open (it was her driver's-side front corner that had hit my driver's-side rear corner - because I'd almost gotten through and she'd tried to stop before she hit me, we'd hit like the two rays of a single ninety-degree angle).
"Do you want me to call someone?" I asked, I think holding up my bag as though she'd be able to see the cell phone inside the zipped-up compartment. She said not, and while I called my mom, she called the police.
Since I remember what I said better than what she did, I should go out of my way immediately to tell you how very, very nice she was. She asked whether I was okay, she didn't ask me what had happened, and as we waited for the police and my dad to come (I'd gotten Mom, but she'd had me call Dad - they were together with my brother at an SU basketball game, but he was elsewhere in the dome at the moment - which made sense, since the car and insurance are in his name), she had me wait in her car, since mine didn't seem to be starting. We talked a little about my life, a little about her kids. Her radio was playing, too - a country station.
Also, eventually other cars did start coming by, and everyone in them was very nice - asked if we were okay; some offered to call someone or help if we needed it.
In the end, a policeman arrived in fairly short order and got my car to start - the reason it wasn't starting, as he demonstrated, was because my car apparently has some kind of emergency fuel shutoff, perhaps to keep itself from catching fire after a crash. (I'm all for that safety measure if that's why it's there. It didn't even occur to me that my car might catch on fire, since, again, it hadn't felt like a really bad accident, but I'm glad if the odds were lessened still more.) Then he collected licenses and registrations and insurance, and sat in his car for a long time while I sat in the other lady's and we waited for my dad to come.
He did - a little grim, thanks to his having a better grasp than I of the various transportational, paperwork-oriented, and monetary hassles I had just caused him, but not mad at me - and we talked to the police officer, who by this time had printed out my traffic ticket, since the accident had been my fault. He (the officer) got out of his car to show me, by standing and pointing, exactly what I'd done: I'd known at the time that I must not have looked carefully enough at the stop, but it was he who pointed out, judging by the tracks I'd left in the snow, that I'd stopped too far back to be able to see the lady coming.
So I, who don't speed and have never gotten a ticket or even been pulled over for anything, was tagged with a failure to yield right-of-way at an intersection, and even if I wanted to, it'd sure be hard to argue with that one. And in addition to submitting my plea of "guilty" by mail so that I don't have to try to drive up after teaching next month to appear in court, I most likely will also have to fill out the very thorough DMV form MV-104 ("Report of Motor Vehicle Accident"), which you may look up if you're curious about the fun I'm in for.
Back at the house, my dad started to get my old car ready - the one I had for most of college and until recently, when my parents took it for their backup vehicle - so that I could go back to Binghamton, given that the repair to the crashed car was going to take some days. However, he found the battery dead and the back-left tire soft again - fairly recent, but recurrent, problems with that car. So my hopes of getting back to Binghamton today came to nothing, and shortly thereafter, my dad got the closest to angry with me that he got when I realized that I had also left the driver's manual and mechanic's-shop receipts, which had been in the same zip-up pouch as my registration (though that had ended up, thank goodness, in my pocket), in the other lady's car by mistake.
Also, he'd left the basketball game to come and get me, so my mom and brother, who'd stayed at the game, were now without any transportation home. So soon I was alone in the house as he went off to get them.
I was jumpy then, walking around, checking Facebook, late for lunch but not yet hungry, nervous about the bit of soreness in my neck, wondering if I were dizzy or just tired (I think it was the latter). I was pacing an oval on the living room floor when the doorbell rang.
It was the lady from the accident, my missing pouch in hand. "Thank you so much," I said, and she left right away, and I closed the door.
I stood in the living room, alone in the house, the recipient of unfailing kindness, almost unhurt. For the first time all day, I started to cry.
I'm fine, save for a small soreness where my neck meets my shoulders, but around 11:45 this morning I was just starting back out to Binghamton, going via a route that I take sometimes when I feel like doing something slightly different, listening to the guy on the phone with Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me! try to get the first question in the Listener Limerick Challenge. The rhyme he needed was clearly "retire," but he wasn't getting it, and even here, on the second read of the limerick, he'd only gotten as far as guessing, "Expire?" as I slowed to a stop at the sign. I must have glanced around the intersection, but my mind was really more on this limerick guy than on what I needed to be doing at that moment.
What I needed to be doing, but didn't, was creeping out a little farther before I started through the intersection, since it was really snowing out there, and a drift was starting to obscure the view to my left, where any car coming would be coming up a hill, such that I wouldn't get a whole lot of warning before it reached the entrance to the intersection.
Also, had I been paying more attention, I would hopefully have realized that this is the intersection that I always half-expect to be a four-way stop, but it isn't. I'd had to stop, but anyone coming through the crossing street wouldn't.
And that's why, when I pulled out into the intersection - which is not a busy one - there was suddenly an SUV-type Jeep about to enter it.
More than once it's almost gotten me into trouble that my first impulse at split-second-decision moments is always to hit the brake. This time it did get me into trouble, because had I just fired right through, I think we would have missed each other, but instead, with a mental gasp, I slowed, then recovered (or maybe just changed my mind? I don't know, and logic often fails me when fast driving decisions come up) and went. I remember a few moments of suspense before the crash, wondering if I'd make it through, and then I could hear myself get hit and felt the push.
I wasn't panicked, didn't feel like I was about to be hurt or killed - the clearest feeling I remember, though I think there were several, was the heart-sink of having failed to avoid the crash...I think some thought closer to this other driver will be mad than anything else. Even as I got hit, it didn't feel like a bad crash or like I'd lost every bit of control, and I'm always in a seatbelt, so I wasn't going to be thrown anywhere. So it was actually a little worse than I'd expected when my car stopped moving and I found myself (still in the car, of course) in the middle of the intersection, facing the opposite direction from which I'd come. It'd only been a 180; I hadn't been in motion for long, comparatively, and I think I'd have known it if I'd done a 540.
The other car was in front of me and over to the left - it'd been pushed to its right from the place where it'd hit me, and seemed to have run into a snowbank at the corner of the streets (not buried there, but at the time I think I'd thought maybe a bit of its front end had gone into it).
At first I thought the lady might be hurt - she was moving there, but she wasn't opening her door. She seemed to be fumbling at the handle. I grabbed my bag (or got out and stood by my door for a second, looking at the other car, then went back for it - I can't remember clearly), not realizing I'd left my keys in the ignition (not that it mattered, since the door was unlocked; I don't think the car was running, but I would notice within the next couple of minutes that the radio had either come back on or had been on all the time), and left the car in a guilty rush. The intersection seemed big as I stepped into the middle of it (again, it wasn't busy - it was in a suburban neighborhood, and no cars had approached since our collision), and in a daze I think I checked for cars before I ran over to where she was.
She was bending over the passenger seat now as though checking something. There was a moment of numb dread in which I thought she might have had a child in there. But then she had a door open, and it was only her.
"I am so sorry," I said. "Are you okay?"
She was, though she couldn't get her driver's-side door open (it was her driver's-side front corner that had hit my driver's-side rear corner - because I'd almost gotten through and she'd tried to stop before she hit me, we'd hit like the two rays of a single ninety-degree angle).
"Do you want me to call someone?" I asked, I think holding up my bag as though she'd be able to see the cell phone inside the zipped-up compartment. She said not, and while I called my mom, she called the police.
Since I remember what I said better than what she did, I should go out of my way immediately to tell you how very, very nice she was. She asked whether I was okay, she didn't ask me what had happened, and as we waited for the police and my dad to come (I'd gotten Mom, but she'd had me call Dad - they were together with my brother at an SU basketball game, but he was elsewhere in the dome at the moment - which made sense, since the car and insurance are in his name), she had me wait in her car, since mine didn't seem to be starting. We talked a little about my life, a little about her kids. Her radio was playing, too - a country station.
Also, eventually other cars did start coming by, and everyone in them was very nice - asked if we were okay; some offered to call someone or help if we needed it.
In the end, a policeman arrived in fairly short order and got my car to start - the reason it wasn't starting, as he demonstrated, was because my car apparently has some kind of emergency fuel shutoff, perhaps to keep itself from catching fire after a crash. (I'm all for that safety measure if that's why it's there. It didn't even occur to me that my car might catch on fire, since, again, it hadn't felt like a really bad accident, but I'm glad if the odds were lessened still more.) Then he collected licenses and registrations and insurance, and sat in his car for a long time while I sat in the other lady's and we waited for my dad to come.
He did - a little grim, thanks to his having a better grasp than I of the various transportational, paperwork-oriented, and monetary hassles I had just caused him, but not mad at me - and we talked to the police officer, who by this time had printed out my traffic ticket, since the accident had been my fault. He (the officer) got out of his car to show me, by standing and pointing, exactly what I'd done: I'd known at the time that I must not have looked carefully enough at the stop, but it was he who pointed out, judging by the tracks I'd left in the snow, that I'd stopped too far back to be able to see the lady coming.
So I, who don't speed and have never gotten a ticket or even been pulled over for anything, was tagged with a failure to yield right-of-way at an intersection, and even if I wanted to, it'd sure be hard to argue with that one. And in addition to submitting my plea of "guilty" by mail so that I don't have to try to drive up after teaching next month to appear in court, I most likely will also have to fill out the very thorough DMV form MV-104 ("Report of Motor Vehicle Accident"), which you may look up if you're curious about the fun I'm in for.
Back at the house, my dad started to get my old car ready - the one I had for most of college and until recently, when my parents took it for their backup vehicle - so that I could go back to Binghamton, given that the repair to the crashed car was going to take some days. However, he found the battery dead and the back-left tire soft again - fairly recent, but recurrent, problems with that car. So my hopes of getting back to Binghamton today came to nothing, and shortly thereafter, my dad got the closest to angry with me that he got when I realized that I had also left the driver's manual and mechanic's-shop receipts, which had been in the same zip-up pouch as my registration (though that had ended up, thank goodness, in my pocket), in the other lady's car by mistake.
Also, he'd left the basketball game to come and get me, so my mom and brother, who'd stayed at the game, were now without any transportation home. So soon I was alone in the house as he went off to get them.
I was jumpy then, walking around, checking Facebook, late for lunch but not yet hungry, nervous about the bit of soreness in my neck, wondering if I were dizzy or just tired (I think it was the latter). I was pacing an oval on the living room floor when the doorbell rang.
It was the lady from the accident, my missing pouch in hand. "Thank you so much," I said, and she left right away, and I closed the door.
I stood in the living room, alone in the house, the recipient of unfailing kindness, almost unhurt. For the first time all day, I started to cry.
1.14.2011
Another Brief One
Hello! I'm in Syracuse to see my parents; I'll be back tomorrow. Today was busy, but I got a free (well, in the sense that my parents paid instead of me) restaurant dinner and European-market dessert out of it, and I watched the rest of my family play Masterpiece (this board game that my brother last played in junior high and has been wanting to play since, but my mom thought it was boring and kept refusing, but tonight he roped Mom and Dad in and had me help out and it turned out to be fine), and we all played Family Feud.
This weekend will hopefully involve a little more lesson-planning, but will also likely involve spaghetti and football. But probably not simultaneously.
The end.
This weekend will hopefully involve a little more lesson-planning, but will also likely involve spaghetti and football. But probably not simultaneously.
The end.
1.13.2011
Updates and Such
1. We've caught a mouse. The caramel lured it and it set off the trap. Carrie found it this morning, while I was still sleeping, and was so traumatized (I didn't realize that, though she's had mice to catch before, she freaks out when she has to deal with dead ones) that she called her dad and put him on speakerphone and made him talk her through throwing it in the trash.
I want no more mice in our trash bin, though, there to rot until Tuesday morning (when the garbage-takers come). If I find one tomorrow morning, I'll deal with it myself, and I am totally taking the carcass outside, even if I gag all the way there.
2. Jason, a friend of ours from church, is moving to Houston, Texas next week. He's been thinking about moving for a while now - he's got scleroderma, to which Binghamton winters are not particularly kind. Houston will be warmer and, also a plus, less dry. We'll miss him - he's a great guy with strong faith.
Ife organized a get-together for him tonight at CyberCafe, so a bunch of us went there. Some of the guys played billiards, and some of the rest of us played Fluxx. Jason kind of went in and out, and also talked on the phone to Brendan, also of our friend group, because Brendan's got pneumonia and couldn't come. Altogether, it was a little cramped a venue - we'd probably have done better at someone's house - but it was nice to see Jason and to hear him talk about his plans and what he looked forward to and what he'd missed. We all did a lot of joking around. Nice time.
3. I planned three lessons today, and I also talked to people about stuff I wanted to talk about, and it was satisfying.
4. Reverend Anne and her parents, when she was growing up, would sometimes pick a "family motto" for the year, often something sardonic like "Let me be your morning cup of coffee." I've decided that if I had to set a motto for this year, it should probably be, mostly as a reminder to myself, "It's not that you don't know the answer - it's that you don't like the answer."
That is all.
I want no more mice in our trash bin, though, there to rot until Tuesday morning (when the garbage-takers come). If I find one tomorrow morning, I'll deal with it myself, and I am totally taking the carcass outside, even if I gag all the way there.
2. Jason, a friend of ours from church, is moving to Houston, Texas next week. He's been thinking about moving for a while now - he's got scleroderma, to which Binghamton winters are not particularly kind. Houston will be warmer and, also a plus, less dry. We'll miss him - he's a great guy with strong faith.
Ife organized a get-together for him tonight at CyberCafe, so a bunch of us went there. Some of the guys played billiards, and some of the rest of us played Fluxx. Jason kind of went in and out, and also talked on the phone to Brendan, also of our friend group, because Brendan's got pneumonia and couldn't come. Altogether, it was a little cramped a venue - we'd probably have done better at someone's house - but it was nice to see Jason and to hear him talk about his plans and what he looked forward to and what he'd missed. We all did a lot of joking around. Nice time.
3. I planned three lessons today, and I also talked to people about stuff I wanted to talk about, and it was satisfying.
4. Reverend Anne and her parents, when she was growing up, would sometimes pick a "family motto" for the year, often something sardonic like "Let me be your morning cup of coffee." I've decided that if I had to set a motto for this year, it should probably be, mostly as a reminder to myself, "It's not that you don't know the answer - it's that you don't like the answer."
That is all.
1.12.2011
Typing Soundtrack: Erik Satie
Not much to report today. I eventually, after much procrastination, did some work for school. I also went to the vestry meeting for church (the "vestry" is the decision-making board of an Anglican church; there're about ten people on ours), and then I helped Carrie rearrange the furniture downstairs.
No mice in the traps this morning. We may have rid ourselves of them (the mice) by stopping up the cabinet gaps, but we put melty caramel on said traps tonight, just in case.
Carrie made delicious black-bean quesadilla wedges for lunch. We've also been eating the leftover artichoke-and-potato soup that I made, not because it's so fantastic, but because there's so much of it.
No mice in the traps this morning. We may have rid ourselves of them (the mice) by stopping up the cabinet gaps, but we put melty caramel on said traps tonight, just in case.
Carrie made delicious black-bean quesadilla wedges for lunch. We've also been eating the leftover artichoke-and-potato soup that I made, not because it's so fantastic, but because there's so much of it.
1.11.2011
Pestilence
This morning I came downstairs after a weird dream in which I'd been coerced into being part of some forced-labor brigade or something (it was actually a lot more complicated - and interesting - than I'm making it sound), and Carrie, sitting at the dining-room table with her laptop running (installing Things, which's apparently organizational software for Mac users like her - since Carrie loves when style and efficiency coexist, she was definitely geeking out, both at the organizational possibilities and at how beautiful Apple had made it), informed me that...we have a mouse. As in, coming out at night into our kitchen.
A mouse.
I understand that this happens to lots of people. And it's really not the scurrying-small-creatureness of this that skitches me out so much as the pestilence factor - I mean, it's a rodent. And it leaves droppings everywhere. Like, ew. And you have to understand, I spent most of my childhood in a house constructed in about 1993; mice lived in the bushes, but the only way one ever entered our house, as far as I know, was via the mouth or stomach of our cat. So, despite the fact that the danger factor isn't particularly high here (I mean, it isn't a rat or bat or something), this is new and unpleasant for me.
Also, was this mouse here while I was the only one in the house? (I genuinely did not know, until this morning, what mouse droppings look like, so it's entirely possible.)
If it was, is there any chance this is my fault?
Carrie believes not. But anyway, she'd found dunglets last night and had set a trap, baiting it with peanut butter. This morning, though, we found more droppings inside a kitchen drawer, on top of one or two of the kitchen gadgets (again, this is my emphasis because I'm still kind of grossed out) - a drawer that she didn't think had had them in there last night. Also, though the trap was unsprung, the peanut butter was gone.
So perhaps we have not just any standard mouse, but a smart mouse. Or else a lucky one. Either way, I could feel my school-prep time for today go down the soapy-watered drain, because clearly we were going to have to clean the kitchen pretty thoroughly, as well as plug up the holes Carrie thought the mouse (or, plural, mice...ech) was coming in through. Luckily, she did all the plugging (since I wouldn't have known how to find the holes, let alone what to do about them), and I stuck to doing most of the dishes (washing every kitchen gadget in that drawer of kitchen gadgets in which we'd found the dung). (We put on her Jackson 5 best-of CD, for basically no reason except that it felt like good cleaning music to me.)
Later that day, because suddenly I wanted to clean things, I vacuumed my whole carpet, pulling all my furniture out to do so. I tackled dust bunnies that may well have been five-plus months old. And I would have moved things around had there been any other decent system besides the passable one I've already imposed.
So tonight we've got three traps, all peanut-buttered, with caramels in a covered jar on the counter as backup for tomorrow night if somehow nothing happens tonight either (apparently, when melted, they're better, stickier bait for traps, harder to lick off without springing them).
And here I am thinking, I had no idea as I set soap-and-vinegar traps this summer that I'd come to prefer battling fruit flies.
A mouse.
I understand that this happens to lots of people. And it's really not the scurrying-small-creatureness of this that skitches me out so much as the pestilence factor - I mean, it's a rodent. And it leaves droppings everywhere. Like, ew. And you have to understand, I spent most of my childhood in a house constructed in about 1993; mice lived in the bushes, but the only way one ever entered our house, as far as I know, was via the mouth or stomach of our cat. So, despite the fact that the danger factor isn't particularly high here (I mean, it isn't a rat or bat or something), this is new and unpleasant for me.
Also, was this mouse here while I was the only one in the house? (I genuinely did not know, until this morning, what mouse droppings look like, so it's entirely possible.)
If it was, is there any chance this is my fault?
Carrie believes not. But anyway, she'd found dunglets last night and had set a trap, baiting it with peanut butter. This morning, though, we found more droppings inside a kitchen drawer, on top of one or two of the kitchen gadgets (again, this is my emphasis because I'm still kind of grossed out) - a drawer that she didn't think had had them in there last night. Also, though the trap was unsprung, the peanut butter was gone.
So perhaps we have not just any standard mouse, but a smart mouse. Or else a lucky one. Either way, I could feel my school-prep time for today go down the soapy-watered drain, because clearly we were going to have to clean the kitchen pretty thoroughly, as well as plug up the holes Carrie thought the mouse (or, plural, mice...ech) was coming in through. Luckily, she did all the plugging (since I wouldn't have known how to find the holes, let alone what to do about them), and I stuck to doing most of the dishes (washing every kitchen gadget in that drawer of kitchen gadgets in which we'd found the dung). (We put on her Jackson 5 best-of CD, for basically no reason except that it felt like good cleaning music to me.)
Later that day, because suddenly I wanted to clean things, I vacuumed my whole carpet, pulling all my furniture out to do so. I tackled dust bunnies that may well have been five-plus months old. And I would have moved things around had there been any other decent system besides the passable one I've already imposed.
So tonight we've got three traps, all peanut-buttered, with caramels in a covered jar on the counter as backup for tomorrow night if somehow nothing happens tonight either (apparently, when melted, they're better, stickier bait for traps, harder to lick off without springing them).
And here I am thinking, I had no idea as I set soap-and-vinegar traps this summer that I'd come to prefer battling fruit flies.
Just in Time, I Think (Posted at Midnight)
I totally forgot about this for the vast majority of the day and am still kind of surprised I've made the deadline. (I didn't post until midnight, but I started the initial version around 11:47...I guess that'll count.) So this will be short:
Carrie was off at an InterVarsity staff conference between Wednesday and Sunday, but last night, for no reason we can discern (there didn't seem to be bad weather at either airport), her connecting flight from Detroit back to Binghamton was canceled, so she ended up getting a ticket to Ithaca instead and staying with friends who live there. So today I went to pick her up, and we went to Moosewood Restaurant, which I like much better than I did back in high school or whatever the only other time was that I was there. Really, that's largely because now I'm old enough to like most vegetables, but even my high-school self would have liked the potato-and-leek frittata I ended up getting. We also poked around a couple of shops Carrie loves and I like, including Ten Thousand Villages, which makes me wish that life contained more excuses to get people nice presents, since TTV sells such nice things, but many of the ones I thought people I know would like are really the kinds of things you'd give as wedding gifts or something, not just because.
I helped Ife out with youth group, but tonight a few kids were missing, leaving us with only three, so we spent pretty much the whole time playing Pit (the newest version, if you're at all curious), and I ended up having the highest score by the time we had to end the game. It was my second consecutive day playing Pit - with some IV-B students we played some very energetic rounds yesterday after church. If you're looking to acquire a game, I definitely recommend it.
And then I went to trivia; our team (One-Eyed Jacks) placed a respectable third overall (though maybe we were tied for third - I don't remember). If you're curious, horse-racing in the UK goes clockwise, rather than counterclockwise. Check it out next time you watch, say, My Fair Lady; see if they do it right.
Carrie was off at an InterVarsity staff conference between Wednesday and Sunday, but last night, for no reason we can discern (there didn't seem to be bad weather at either airport), her connecting flight from Detroit back to Binghamton was canceled, so she ended up getting a ticket to Ithaca instead and staying with friends who live there. So today I went to pick her up, and we went to Moosewood Restaurant, which I like much better than I did back in high school or whatever the only other time was that I was there. Really, that's largely because now I'm old enough to like most vegetables, but even my high-school self would have liked the potato-and-leek frittata I ended up getting. We also poked around a couple of shops Carrie loves and I like, including Ten Thousand Villages, which makes me wish that life contained more excuses to get people nice presents, since TTV sells such nice things, but many of the ones I thought people I know would like are really the kinds of things you'd give as wedding gifts or something, not just because.
I helped Ife out with youth group, but tonight a few kids were missing, leaving us with only three, so we spent pretty much the whole time playing Pit (the newest version, if you're at all curious), and I ended up having the highest score by the time we had to end the game. It was my second consecutive day playing Pit - with some IV-B students we played some very energetic rounds yesterday after church. If you're looking to acquire a game, I definitely recommend it.
And then I went to trivia; our team (One-Eyed Jacks) placed a respectable third overall (though maybe we were tied for third - I don't remember). If you're curious, horse-racing in the UK goes clockwise, rather than counterclockwise. Check it out next time you watch, say, My Fair Lady; see if they do it right.
1.09.2011
Drowsily
Thanks to the NFL playoffs, this weekend turned out to be a socially-interactive one after all; I went over to Ife and Zack's a couple of times to watch various games. This evening we also made pizza, since I still had the stuff for it - though really Zack and I made it, and Ife helped eat it. (Besides Ife not having the zeal for cooking that both Zack and I do, he was also genuinely wiped, having been up late last night to finish writing - he's our church's youth pastor and considering seminary, so every few months he gives a sermon as practice - and then up early this morning to be at church in time for the 8 AM service, since he had to preach at both. So he kept falling asleep during the games and while the pizza was being made.)
I mention the pizza partly as background for the following mini-story: one of the pizza-making supplies I'd brought over was a plastic grinder-type jar - basically the kind of jar that grind-your-own black pepper comes in, but cheaper - of pizza seasoning. It was just basil, salt, red and green pepper, garlic, and maybe something else, all mixed together, and because it was interesting and about $1.09, I'd thrown it in my bag at Aldi on Friday. Well, I opened the stuff to try it out, and I was busy trying to grind it on...
...When the bottom dropped out of the jar and immediately covered my smallish square of pizza in literally about an inch of seasoning. Apparently, while trying to twist the grinder effectively, I'd unscrewed it or something. So let that be a lesson to you all: pay attention to the way the threads on the jar go, and make your grinding motions in the opposite direction!
I mention the pizza partly as background for the following mini-story: one of the pizza-making supplies I'd brought over was a plastic grinder-type jar - basically the kind of jar that grind-your-own black pepper comes in, but cheaper - of pizza seasoning. It was just basil, salt, red and green pepper, garlic, and maybe something else, all mixed together, and because it was interesting and about $1.09, I'd thrown it in my bag at Aldi on Friday. Well, I opened the stuff to try it out, and I was busy trying to grind it on...
...When the bottom dropped out of the jar and immediately covered my smallish square of pizza in literally about an inch of seasoning. Apparently, while trying to twist the grinder effectively, I'd unscrewed it or something. So let that be a lesson to you all: pay attention to the way the threads on the jar go, and make your grinding motions in the opposite direction!
1.08.2011
It's Saturday; I've Actually Been Working
So I think that, because it was written hurriedly and when I was tired and a little stir-crazy, my previous entry suffered from what some of us in the composition-education world might call an audience-awareness problem:
My primary concern was to communicate that I was starved for company primarily because I'd been in the house for the better part of sixty hours, not because no one had come for pizza, but while writing I didn't stop to ask myself whether anyone I'd invited for pizza reads this blog. I'm sorry (especially to the Kovacs, who were pretty penitent); I totally did not realize how finger-pointy that first paragraph had the potential to sound. I considered it totally legitimate that everyone was busy and was just lamenting bad luck, not implying that people were being bad friends and not paying enough attention to me.
I also want to underscore that I wasn't fighting with Carrie about decor or using our differences as an excuse for self-hatred; it's tricky ground saying anything potentially-critical in a public space about one's housemate and/or one's self in relation to her, and I was not careful enough.
It's true that she has a much more specific sense of what's aesthetically-pleasant than I do, but often that works out fine for both of us. Once in a while, yes, I have to be concerned while shopping about things that it would not otherwise occur to me to be concerned about (for Carrie, room color schemes extend down to the little things as well as the big, so I find myself having to consider, for example, whether the soap and tissue-box colors match the rest of the bathroom), but it's not like she always commands and I always obey (though, given that it's her house and I'm the renter, she probably technically has that power), and it's not as bad a situation as I made it sound (I was being either wry or hurried, but it came off poorly). But occasionally, as will happen when people live together, it does get on my nerves a little, so when I realized that some of her motivation was probably about more than aesthetics - some is likely also about her perceived audience and what would make them happy - it felt worthy of discussion. But I'm not being shamefaced about being a college student at heart; it's a style I like.
Have I made it worse instead of better? Do you people feel yelled at or embarrassed or anything? I thought about just deleting the offending post, but that seemed like going too far - plus, then I'd be another entry down.
Anyway, I did actually start work for the course today (I'm overly optimistic about it when I actually do the work, and overly pessimistic when I don't, so basically you should never ask me how class is going, because my answer will probably never be accurate), and when I read over this semester's rosters for the first time, I found a nice girl I'd unfortunately had to fail last semester (I'd felt bad about it, too - she'd had some inconvenient out-of-class stuff go on, and she was really pretty good at writing, and she'd almost passed). I was touched that she'd sign back up with me again; I'd tried to help at the time, but it was good to know that she didn't think I was mean for not cutting her more of a break.
My failing plagiarist and dead-relative-story-tellers, on the other hand, have not signed up with me again. But I can't say that I'm surprised about that.
My primary concern was to communicate that I was starved for company primarily because I'd been in the house for the better part of sixty hours, not because no one had come for pizza, but while writing I didn't stop to ask myself whether anyone I'd invited for pizza reads this blog. I'm sorry (especially to the Kovacs, who were pretty penitent); I totally did not realize how finger-pointy that first paragraph had the potential to sound. I considered it totally legitimate that everyone was busy and was just lamenting bad luck, not implying that people were being bad friends and not paying enough attention to me.
I also want to underscore that I wasn't fighting with Carrie about decor or using our differences as an excuse for self-hatred; it's tricky ground saying anything potentially-critical in a public space about one's housemate and/or one's self in relation to her, and I was not careful enough.
It's true that she has a much more specific sense of what's aesthetically-pleasant than I do, but often that works out fine for both of us. Once in a while, yes, I have to be concerned while shopping about things that it would not otherwise occur to me to be concerned about (for Carrie, room color schemes extend down to the little things as well as the big, so I find myself having to consider, for example, whether the soap and tissue-box colors match the rest of the bathroom), but it's not like she always commands and I always obey (though, given that it's her house and I'm the renter, she probably technically has that power), and it's not as bad a situation as I made it sound (I was being either wry or hurried, but it came off poorly). But occasionally, as will happen when people live together, it does get on my nerves a little, so when I realized that some of her motivation was probably about more than aesthetics - some is likely also about her perceived audience and what would make them happy - it felt worthy of discussion. But I'm not being shamefaced about being a college student at heart; it's a style I like.
Have I made it worse instead of better? Do you people feel yelled at or embarrassed or anything? I thought about just deleting the offending post, but that seemed like going too far - plus, then I'd be another entry down.
Anyway, I did actually start work for the course today (I'm overly optimistic about it when I actually do the work, and overly pessimistic when I don't, so basically you should never ask me how class is going, because my answer will probably never be accurate), and when I read over this semester's rosters for the first time, I found a nice girl I'd unfortunately had to fail last semester (I'd felt bad about it, too - she'd had some inconvenient out-of-class stuff go on, and she was really pretty good at writing, and she'd almost passed). I was touched that she'd sign back up with me again; I'd tried to help at the time, but it was good to know that she didn't think I was mean for not cutting her more of a break.
My failing plagiarist and dead-relative-story-tellers, on the other hand, have not signed up with me again. But I can't say that I'm surprised about that.
1.07.2011
It's Friday; I'm...Alone
Except for taking Carrie to the airport and a mere two other instances in which I've run errands, I have been in this house nonstop since 6:30pm on Tuesday night, and it's now nearly sixty hours later, and I would like so much to leave this house and see people that I am almost willing to go catch whatever sickness Zack has, assuming he still has it, and assuming he and Ife aren't doing anything in particular. I invited people here, for pizza, but everyone was busy, or else didn't get the message.
Also, I don't even know where to begin to prepare for this semester. How am I supposed to suddenly want to throw myself into preparation for another four months of something I dread so much?
Anyway, I realized today that one reason Carrie's and my hospitality styles differ is because at heart I've never really left college - I met most of my current friends there, and many of their careers are high-school or college-oriented, or - in this economy - are the types of jobs that current college students work. So I'm used to things on the spur of the moment, potlucky meals, sleeping bags, games, going Dutch, undusted corners. I like to cook something nice for company, and I understand the problem of a sink full of dirty dishes or a floor covered in clutter, but in general, fancy things tend to make me a little nervous.
But Carrie lives in a much more adult world - her friends have full-time jobs, and so does she, and - importantly - she has to establish trust not just with her students, but with those students' parents. She has to interact with traditional Chinese parents, with very specific customs and expectations, without insulting them or seeming ignorant (I'm not trying to pick on the Chinese or anything; it's just true that there really is a culture gap that she's had to take into account). She has to give donors a sense that their money is going somewhere. She has to do a lot of things that I simply do not have the people skills to really do.
And so even when it drives me crazy that I can't even buy a box of tissues without having to ask myself if its color is going to drive her crazy if I put it in the bathroom, I have to recognize, we're playing for two different audiences here. I mean, she's a hostess to her friends as well, and she also likes things pretty just because those things are pretty, but she's not just trying to show off. She has a different career and lives a slightly-different life.
This whole entry's not very coherent, but I'm tired, and if I can't get hold of people, I feel like I might be better off in bed.
Also, I don't even know where to begin to prepare for this semester. How am I supposed to suddenly want to throw myself into preparation for another four months of something I dread so much?
Anyway, I realized today that one reason Carrie's and my hospitality styles differ is because at heart I've never really left college - I met most of my current friends there, and many of their careers are high-school or college-oriented, or - in this economy - are the types of jobs that current college students work. So I'm used to things on the spur of the moment, potlucky meals, sleeping bags, games, going Dutch, undusted corners. I like to cook something nice for company, and I understand the problem of a sink full of dirty dishes or a floor covered in clutter, but in general, fancy things tend to make me a little nervous.
But Carrie lives in a much more adult world - her friends have full-time jobs, and so does she, and - importantly - she has to establish trust not just with her students, but with those students' parents. She has to interact with traditional Chinese parents, with very specific customs and expectations, without insulting them or seeming ignorant (I'm not trying to pick on the Chinese or anything; it's just true that there really is a culture gap that she's had to take into account). She has to give donors a sense that their money is going somewhere. She has to do a lot of things that I simply do not have the people skills to really do.
And so even when it drives me crazy that I can't even buy a box of tissues without having to ask myself if its color is going to drive her crazy if I put it in the bathroom, I have to recognize, we're playing for two different audiences here. I mean, she's a hostess to her friends as well, and she also likes things pretty just because those things are pretty, but she's not just trying to show off. She has a different career and lives a slightly-different life.
This whole entry's not very coherent, but I'm tired, and if I can't get hold of people, I feel like I might be better off in bed.
Arghh! Late!
So while I was supposed to be writing this blog entry, what was I doing instead, such that I completely forgot what I'd gotten on the computer for until it was already past midnight and technically January 6th was over?
Among other things, solving Car Talk's weekly puzzler (if the link works properly, you should see a thing about buying a hundred animals for a hundred dollars). Which I ultimately did figure out, I will have you know. No, I'm not going to tell you. You'll have to try it yourself.
But so much for my New Year's resolution, technically. Oh, well, I'll pretend it doesn't matter.
This entry was going to be pretty short anyway; I have only two things to cover:
1. Apparently it is sometimes worth it to buy a warranty from Target. Having done that in the summer of '09 when I purchased a GPS (since the one before it had lost its voice capability about, I dunno, fifteen months in, and at that time I hadn't had a warranty and so couldn't do anything about it), I wasn't sure what to expect when said device malfunctioned and quit working (maybe keeping it in my cold car contributed to the problem?) towards the end of Thanksgiving break, since suddenly, when I looked on the Target website, the users who'd reported in had said that having bought theirs had availed them nothing when they tried to actually file service claims. Yet I finally tried it today, and lo! though I had lost the receipt in the meantime, still they decided to refund me rather than even try to fix it. Had I not spent the $20ish on the warranty, I'd have been out of luck on something only about eighteen months old, but now I am getting a new one, or at least the store credit to buy it. And I will try to bring it into the house on cold nights, just in case.
2. I think I've been meaning to take this picture since about 2006, and last week or so I finally did it. This is posted on one of the bathroom doors at the Hazard Branch Library in Syracuse, NY. Sorry it's a little blurry:
I'll leave things there. I hope you all have, or have had, a good night, and I'll post later - *sigh* - today.
Among other things, solving Car Talk's weekly puzzler (if the link works properly, you should see a thing about buying a hundred animals for a hundred dollars). Which I ultimately did figure out, I will have you know. No, I'm not going to tell you. You'll have to try it yourself.
But so much for my New Year's resolution, technically. Oh, well, I'll pretend it doesn't matter.
This entry was going to be pretty short anyway; I have only two things to cover:
1. Apparently it is sometimes worth it to buy a warranty from Target. Having done that in the summer of '09 when I purchased a GPS (since the one before it had lost its voice capability about, I dunno, fifteen months in, and at that time I hadn't had a warranty and so couldn't do anything about it), I wasn't sure what to expect when said device malfunctioned and quit working (maybe keeping it in my cold car contributed to the problem?) towards the end of Thanksgiving break, since suddenly, when I looked on the Target website, the users who'd reported in had said that having bought theirs had availed them nothing when they tried to actually file service claims. Yet I finally tried it today, and lo! though I had lost the receipt in the meantime, still they decided to refund me rather than even try to fix it. Had I not spent the $20ish on the warranty, I'd have been out of luck on something only about eighteen months old, but now I am getting a new one, or at least the store credit to buy it. And I will try to bring it into the house on cold nights, just in case.
2. I think I've been meaning to take this picture since about 2006, and last week or so I finally did it. This is posted on one of the bathroom doors at the Hazard Branch Library in Syracuse, NY. Sorry it's a little blurry:
I'll leave things there. I hope you all have, or have had, a good night, and I'll post later - *sigh* - today.
1.05.2011
Briefly, On Candles
One of the small pleasures of being an adult and therefore getting to do most little things more or less the way I want to has been to acquire and occasionally burn scented candles. They're not a deep interest of mine - I haven't filled my house with them, and I don't seek out information about them, the way I do with cooking ingredients - but even from being a kid, it was always a little fascinating to watch that bobbing flame, to stick my finger in the melted wax just after (or, if the candle was big enough and I was careful, even before) the flame was blown or put out, to use my mom's candle-snuffer, to smell stylized aromas in the air.
Back then, my mom burned them only at parties, or when the power was out. These days, they're oddly comforting when I have to grade papers - somehow a lit candle tends to make everything a little more bearable.
Every year, apparently, Carrie buys a certain set of Advent candles (though this year's colors differed slightly from last year's), which, though not all that tall, are thick, and so are never very burned-down by the end of Christmas. Those are especially nice to light all together on other nights, like during Bible studies in the living room with other people, or as I lie on the couch, alone in the room, and talk on the phone with someone. I did the latter both on Halloween night this past year (we'd run out of candy, so I wanted to keep the regular lights off) and tonight after Bible study with the girls had ended.
I don't think I have an all-time favorite scent; I don't get them often enough for that. I know I'm looking forward to getting to light the spiced-pumpkin votive I have around, since it matches the spiced-pumpkin air freshener that made my car smell so wonderful this past October.
But I bring it up mainly, like I said, just because it's something fun that's in my life these days - I couldn't really do that sort of thing as a kid, and couldn't in college because of the fire hazard, but it's one more tiny freedom now, one minor compensation for also being charged with bigger decisions.
Back then, my mom burned them only at parties, or when the power was out. These days, they're oddly comforting when I have to grade papers - somehow a lit candle tends to make everything a little more bearable.
Every year, apparently, Carrie buys a certain set of Advent candles (though this year's colors differed slightly from last year's), which, though not all that tall, are thick, and so are never very burned-down by the end of Christmas. Those are especially nice to light all together on other nights, like during Bible studies in the living room with other people, or as I lie on the couch, alone in the room, and talk on the phone with someone. I did the latter both on Halloween night this past year (we'd run out of candy, so I wanted to keep the regular lights off) and tonight after Bible study with the girls had ended.
I don't think I have an all-time favorite scent; I don't get them often enough for that. I know I'm looking forward to getting to light the spiced-pumpkin votive I have around, since it matches the spiced-pumpkin air freshener that made my car smell so wonderful this past October.
But I bring it up mainly, like I said, just because it's something fun that's in my life these days - I couldn't really do that sort of thing as a kid, and couldn't in college because of the fire hazard, but it's one more tiny freedom now, one minor compensation for also being charged with bigger decisions.
1.04.2011
Possibly More of a Preview
Given that I've been asleep for most of the past three hours, mostly-unexpectedly sacked out on my bed in my clothes and contacts and with the lights on, I'm surprised I didn't miss the midnight posting deadline, but I didn't quite, so here we are.
Today was a day where nothing happened quite like I thought it would. I'd planned to get up by nine-thirty and then (not necessarily in this order) finish cleaning my room, do some work for next semester, maybe go get some exercise, and bake the no-knead bread by six PM.
Instead, I was up for about two hours in the middle of the night thanks to allergies, didn't get up for good until almost eleven, had a doctor's appointment very soon thereafter to get my two-weeks-sore ankle checked (it turned out to be sprained), took a shower, messed about thereafter trying to put the ACE bandage back on to my satisfaction, baked the bread by three-thirty PM, sat a blood drive for about two-and-a-quarter hours, had unadorned no-knead bread for supper (on top of cookies/juice from the blood drive and, in the case of the cookies, also from another source, so clearly it was a meal of champions) and took an unexpected (but welcome) phone call, after which I almost immediately fell asleep.
Actually, it's good that I fell asleep that early, since I have to be up again at five.
So I'm awake - slightly queasy (maybe because of my irreponsible dinner), my foot slightly pin-and-needly and achy (I've taken off the bandage for now - I could move my toes and everything while I had it on, and it hadn't felt too tight initially, but maybe it was a little too tight after all, or maybe my foot fell asleep while I was sleeping. It's not a bad sprain, so my ankle can stand a few hours unwrapped in the cause of possibly-better blood circulation), and on my way back to bed, once I do some fairly-minimal preparation.
That was my Tuesday.
Today was a day where nothing happened quite like I thought it would. I'd planned to get up by nine-thirty and then (not necessarily in this order) finish cleaning my room, do some work for next semester, maybe go get some exercise, and bake the no-knead bread by six PM.
Instead, I was up for about two hours in the middle of the night thanks to allergies, didn't get up for good until almost eleven, had a doctor's appointment very soon thereafter to get my two-weeks-sore ankle checked (it turned out to be sprained), took a shower, messed about thereafter trying to put the ACE bandage back on to my satisfaction, baked the bread by three-thirty PM, sat a blood drive for about two-and-a-quarter hours, had unadorned no-knead bread for supper (on top of cookies/juice from the blood drive and, in the case of the cookies, also from another source, so clearly it was a meal of champions) and took an unexpected (but welcome) phone call, after which I almost immediately fell asleep.
Actually, it's good that I fell asleep that early, since I have to be up again at five.
So I'm awake - slightly queasy (maybe because of my irreponsible dinner), my foot slightly pin-and-needly and achy (I've taken off the bandage for now - I could move my toes and everything while I had it on, and it hadn't felt too tight initially, but maybe it was a little too tight after all, or maybe my foot fell asleep while I was sleeping. It's not a bad sprain, so my ankle can stand a few hours unwrapped in the cause of possibly-better blood circulation), and on my way back to bed, once I do some fairly-minimal preparation.
That was my Tuesday.
1.03.2011
Remember, I Didn't Say These Would All Be Long or Interesting Posts
It's been a fairly busy day, so just three short things tonight:
1. Bakers out there: why do I feel like it's much harder to get no-knead bread dough to the right texture when I'm using part (or all) bread flour, rather than all-purpose? It looks too dry, so I add water, and then the wetness is better but the texture still seems wrong. Does bread flour suck in more moisture? If so, then why doesn't the recipe warn me about that, given that it says you can use either kind? ...I suppose it's also possible that the coldness and possible dryness of our kitchen has something to do with it; I'm told that dry air absorbs moisture out of flour during the winter, so that might mean I'd have to add a little more water to compensate. Any thoughts? Anybody?
2. Safari or Firefox users: out of curiosity, can any of you not see that part of this blog's background is supposed to be a piece of looseleaf notebook paper? I can see it fine on Google Chrome or IE, but on my iPod (which, of course, uses Safari), the background just shows up all white, which makes this peach-colored part for the text look like a weird choice (but it's not - I didn't do it on purpose! Please acquit me of any possible charges of questionable taste in site design!). Is it just my iPod, or is this a browser problem, or what?
3. Trivia tonight: we did well. Got second place, scoring one of our highest percentages yet of possible points; lost by only one (though that's because the leading team only wagered as many points as it would take to beat us by one, or it would have been by more). Tonight's team name was "Moving Your Couches," since that's what we initially did to have enough space for all of us to sit together, moved some of CyberCafe's furniture, but we'll take other team-name suggestions into consideration, too, if anyone has some. I'm trying to think of what my favorites have been, but I'm drawing a blank.
Which's just as well, though, since it's 11:55 already. Good night!
1. Bakers out there: why do I feel like it's much harder to get no-knead bread dough to the right texture when I'm using part (or all) bread flour, rather than all-purpose? It looks too dry, so I add water, and then the wetness is better but the texture still seems wrong. Does bread flour suck in more moisture? If so, then why doesn't the recipe warn me about that, given that it says you can use either kind? ...I suppose it's also possible that the coldness and possible dryness of our kitchen has something to do with it; I'm told that dry air absorbs moisture out of flour during the winter, so that might mean I'd have to add a little more water to compensate. Any thoughts? Anybody?
2. Safari or Firefox users: out of curiosity, can any of you not see that part of this blog's background is supposed to be a piece of looseleaf notebook paper? I can see it fine on Google Chrome or IE, but on my iPod (which, of course, uses Safari), the background just shows up all white, which makes this peach-colored part for the text look like a weird choice (but it's not - I didn't do it on purpose! Please acquit me of any possible charges of questionable taste in site design!). Is it just my iPod, or is this a browser problem, or what?
3. Trivia tonight: we did well. Got second place, scoring one of our highest percentages yet of possible points; lost by only one (though that's because the leading team only wagered as many points as it would take to beat us by one, or it would have been by more). Tonight's team name was "Moving Your Couches," since that's what we initially did to have enough space for all of us to sit together, moved some of CyberCafe's furniture, but we'll take other team-name suggestions into consideration, too, if anyone has some. I'm trying to think of what my favorites have been, but I'm drawing a blank.
Which's just as well, though, since it's 11:55 already. Good night!
1.02.2011
In Praise Of...
...the no-knead bread I've been making since Christmas and gushing about to anyone who'll listen to me about it.
This is really because it's past 10 PM, I said I'd post something today (which means I only have 'til midnight), and I'm too tired to think of anything else.
But I really am loving this bread. By now you may or may not have heard of the no-knead bread recipe that hit the New York Times in something like late 2006 - I actually heard about it at least one other place first, but then, when I acquired Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything iPod app back this past spring (I don't know how much it is now - I got it for about $2 on leftover iTunes credit - but if you want a really good cookbook in digital form, I recommend it pretty enthusiastically), I came across it again and was so excited that I resolved to make it. (Then I had to wait until Christmas to actually do it, since I didn't have a lidded oven-safe casserole dish until then and was too cheap to buy one on an adjunct/secretary's budget. But now, thanks to my mother, I have a lovely one.)
Allow me to explain the difference between making regular yeast bread and making this no-knead bread:
Regular bread: Clear four or five hours in your schedule (though you won't be working with the dough that whole time, of course). Sprinkle yeast into some warm-but-not-too-hot water and let it get a little foamy (that's called "proofing" it). Meanwhile, mix some flour (but, often, not all the flour the recipe's going to want in there), salt, sugar, and whatever else in a separate bowl. Put in the yeast/water and mix, then (usually) put in more flour until you get a dough that's smooth and not too sticky (your arm might be a little tired unless you've got a stand mixer with a dough hook or something, which I don't). Turn out onto a floured surface and knead for a while, until the dough does whatever the recipe wants it to do. Let it rise until (usually) about doubled, then turn it out and (usually) divide it into loaves, which you then let rise again. Then bake, often at your standard 350. It's typically great stuff, and I like to make it, but it can intimidate people like my mom, who feel like yeast and kneading are finicky and somewhat unforgiving things. Plus, you have to judge by feel on certain things - when you've kneaded enough, how much flour to add, that sort of thing.
No-knead bread: Start it about a day beforehand, but don't plan to give it a lot of attention. Stir flour, salt, and a little bit of yeast together. Add about half as much water to the bowl as you did flour, then stir again; the dough will be sticky. But then, instead of adding more flour to make the dough dry enough to knead and then kneading it, let the stuff sit out (in the bowl, under plastic wrap) for eighteen hours or as close to that as you can schedule (though I hear that even eight hours turns out pretty well). Then work a comparatively-little more flour in and let it rise for two more hours - or not, depending on how you do it. Then you bake it in a hot, hot oven, in a covered pot that has the lid on for part of the time and part not.
Pretty different, huh? I think regular yeast bread's advantage, besides the calming factor of the mixing and kneading, and besides the shorter time until you've got a product, is its versatility; the road to many of the world's many great breads runs through that general dough-making/kneading/first-rise/punchdown/second-rise/bake formula. No-knead bread does make just one type of bread, as far as I know, though of course you can tinker a little (though not a lot) with the type of flour that goes into it, or whether you want to throw in some dried fruit or something, or whatever. But no-knead bread's other great advantages, besides its simplicity, are its looks and texture. It is beautiful stuff - like a bakery loaf or something. Thin, crackly crust, big bubbles inside. And, so importantly (since otherwise, for most people, what's the point?), it tastes just as good as, and sometimes better than, most yeast breads I've made.
So even though there're still breads I'm looking forward to baking in the usual way sometime in 2011 (cinnamon-swirl, plus maybe trying out water rolls and/or some brown-rice bread with Dutch crunch topping), the reason I'm just so excited about the no-knead is that it takes so little work that I can do it during the semester. Seriously, about ten minutes' worth of personal effort goes into it, and you have to make sure you're in the house during the 50ish minutes it's baking, but other than that, it's ridiculously simple - no proofing yeast, no heating milk and butter (not that you always have to do that), no adding half-cups of flour at a time as you judge texture, no getting dough-sticky flour all over the counter during the kneading phase.
By rights I should post a picture of it, but I don't have one of my own handy, so instead you'll have to look at the ones included with the recipes:
This is almost exactly the recipe I follow (in my app the flour-water amounts are a little more straightforward - none of this "1-5/8 cups of water" business - and feel free to substitute regular flour for the "cornmeal or wheat bran" they call for).
This is the Steamy Kitchen blog's slightly simplified variation; though I haven't tested it myself, another blogger I read has. (And you gotta like the pictures of her little son making it!)
If you can get your hands on an oven-safe pot with a lid (at least 3 quarts in capacity, but it needn't be as big as the attached recipes want it to be), you should totally try this.
As for me, I'll be starting a new batch (my fourth in only about a week and a half!) tomorrow. I want to make the regular version for Carrie, so she can taste it in all its original glory, before I start trying to add some whole-wheat flour next time.
This is really because it's past 10 PM, I said I'd post something today (which means I only have 'til midnight), and I'm too tired to think of anything else.
But I really am loving this bread. By now you may or may not have heard of the no-knead bread recipe that hit the New York Times in something like late 2006 - I actually heard about it at least one other place first, but then, when I acquired Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything iPod app back this past spring (I don't know how much it is now - I got it for about $2 on leftover iTunes credit - but if you want a really good cookbook in digital form, I recommend it pretty enthusiastically), I came across it again and was so excited that I resolved to make it. (Then I had to wait until Christmas to actually do it, since I didn't have a lidded oven-safe casserole dish until then and was too cheap to buy one on an adjunct/secretary's budget. But now, thanks to my mother, I have a lovely one.)
Allow me to explain the difference between making regular yeast bread and making this no-knead bread:
Regular bread: Clear four or five hours in your schedule (though you won't be working with the dough that whole time, of course). Sprinkle yeast into some warm-but-not-too-hot water and let it get a little foamy (that's called "proofing" it). Meanwhile, mix some flour (but, often, not all the flour the recipe's going to want in there), salt, sugar, and whatever else in a separate bowl. Put in the yeast/water and mix, then (usually) put in more flour until you get a dough that's smooth and not too sticky (your arm might be a little tired unless you've got a stand mixer with a dough hook or something, which I don't). Turn out onto a floured surface and knead for a while, until the dough does whatever the recipe wants it to do. Let it rise until (usually) about doubled, then turn it out and (usually) divide it into loaves, which you then let rise again. Then bake, often at your standard 350. It's typically great stuff, and I like to make it, but it can intimidate people like my mom, who feel like yeast and kneading are finicky and somewhat unforgiving things. Plus, you have to judge by feel on certain things - when you've kneaded enough, how much flour to add, that sort of thing.
No-knead bread: Start it about a day beforehand, but don't plan to give it a lot of attention. Stir flour, salt, and a little bit of yeast together. Add about half as much water to the bowl as you did flour, then stir again; the dough will be sticky. But then, instead of adding more flour to make the dough dry enough to knead and then kneading it, let the stuff sit out (in the bowl, under plastic wrap) for eighteen hours or as close to that as you can schedule (though I hear that even eight hours turns out pretty well). Then work a comparatively-little more flour in and let it rise for two more hours - or not, depending on how you do it. Then you bake it in a hot, hot oven, in a covered pot that has the lid on for part of the time and part not.
Pretty different, huh? I think regular yeast bread's advantage, besides the calming factor of the mixing and kneading, and besides the shorter time until you've got a product, is its versatility; the road to many of the world's many great breads runs through that general dough-making/kneading/first-rise/punchdown/second-rise/bake formula. No-knead bread does make just one type of bread, as far as I know, though of course you can tinker a little (though not a lot) with the type of flour that goes into it, or whether you want to throw in some dried fruit or something, or whatever. But no-knead bread's other great advantages, besides its simplicity, are its looks and texture. It is beautiful stuff - like a bakery loaf or something. Thin, crackly crust, big bubbles inside. And, so importantly (since otherwise, for most people, what's the point?), it tastes just as good as, and sometimes better than, most yeast breads I've made.
So even though there're still breads I'm looking forward to baking in the usual way sometime in 2011 (cinnamon-swirl, plus maybe trying out water rolls and/or some brown-rice bread with Dutch crunch topping), the reason I'm just so excited about the no-knead is that it takes so little work that I can do it during the semester. Seriously, about ten minutes' worth of personal effort goes into it, and you have to make sure you're in the house during the 50ish minutes it's baking, but other than that, it's ridiculously simple - no proofing yeast, no heating milk and butter (not that you always have to do that), no adding half-cups of flour at a time as you judge texture, no getting dough-sticky flour all over the counter during the kneading phase.
By rights I should post a picture of it, but I don't have one of my own handy, so instead you'll have to look at the ones included with the recipes:
This is almost exactly the recipe I follow (in my app the flour-water amounts are a little more straightforward - none of this "1-5/8 cups of water" business - and feel free to substitute regular flour for the "cornmeal or wheat bran" they call for).
This is the Steamy Kitchen blog's slightly simplified variation; though I haven't tested it myself, another blogger I read has. (And you gotta like the pictures of her little son making it!)
If you can get your hands on an oven-safe pot with a lid (at least 3 quarts in capacity, but it needn't be as big as the attached recipes want it to be), you should totally try this.
As for me, I'll be starting a new batch (my fourth in only about a week and a half!) tomorrow. I want to make the regular version for Carrie, so she can taste it in all its original glory, before I start trying to add some whole-wheat flour next time.
1.01.2011
New Year, New Leaf
Hello and happy 2011!
So here's how it is: I posted less in 2010 than in any other year of my blog's existence. Much less. As in, 58 posts, as opposed to, say, 113 (last year, the lowest number prior to this point) or even 258 (in 2005 - my busiest blogging year). This past year is the first time the entry count didn't make it into triple digits; as you can see, it wasn't even close.
I don't want that to be the new norm, though. This blog has always meant a lot to me, and I'm really glad to have its records of my past eight-or-so years. Unrecorded time tends to be forgotten time, and besides that, there are a lot of things in my life that I've made more sense of by writing through them. (Also, it seems false at heart for me to teach composition if I hardly ever write anything besides journalistic e-mails, random Facebook statuses, and last-minute lesson plans.)
So, disregarding how it is, here's how it's gonna be: a fresh new background and color scheme (am I late on noticing that Blogger seems to have made great strides this past year or so in its template-customization options?), and one post every day this month. Some'll be last-minute or put up a day late, I imagine, and some'll hopefully instead be thorough and/or full of wonder or nerdiness or thought provocation. (If I have my way, you'll also know within a few weeks what an HDOP ["aitch-dop"] entry is, since I have a certain type of thing in mind and think that that's what I'm going to call them. Hint: the acronym won't stand for "horizontal dilution of precision.")
Looking forward to it; here we go.
So here's how it is: I posted less in 2010 than in any other year of my blog's existence. Much less. As in, 58 posts, as opposed to, say, 113 (last year, the lowest number prior to this point) or even 258 (in 2005 - my busiest blogging year). This past year is the first time the entry count didn't make it into triple digits; as you can see, it wasn't even close.
I don't want that to be the new norm, though. This blog has always meant a lot to me, and I'm really glad to have its records of my past eight-or-so years. Unrecorded time tends to be forgotten time, and besides that, there are a lot of things in my life that I've made more sense of by writing through them. (Also, it seems false at heart for me to teach composition if I hardly ever write anything besides journalistic e-mails, random Facebook statuses, and last-minute lesson plans.)
So, disregarding how it is, here's how it's gonna be: a fresh new background and color scheme (am I late on noticing that Blogger seems to have made great strides this past year or so in its template-customization options?), and one post every day this month. Some'll be last-minute or put up a day late, I imagine, and some'll hopefully instead be thorough and/or full of wonder or nerdiness or thought provocation. (If I have my way, you'll also know within a few weeks what an HDOP ["aitch-dop"] entry is, since I have a certain type of thing in mind and think that that's what I'm going to call them. Hint: the acronym won't stand for "horizontal dilution of precision.")
Looking forward to it; here we go.