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Wednesday, January 1st, 2014
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12:25 am - Stacking the deck
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The last couple of weeks have involved a fair bit of cleaning house; for the next 24 hours, the first day of the new year, there is to be none. Although I expect I will still put things in the dishwasher, and fold my laundry that's in the dryer... and my room is still unspeakable. But that is okay; this one is Roomie's tradition. So is soba for the first meal of the year - which we had at midnight, because the tiny quiches were not going to come out of the oven until after midnight either, and it would be sad to not get to eat the quiches yet. So we began the year slurping noodles and giggling about it, which is not a bad start.
The presence of tiny quiches makes it a party. It was a very exclusive party this year - me and roomie and the cat. Leading up to midnight we did such celebratory activities as 'clean out the fridge' and 'mop the kitchen floor' and 'work on workthings some (but less than I ought)'.
There was also sparkling cider, of course, out of fancy glasses; and later (once it is properly daytime) there will be black-eyed peas, because that one is food-tradition from my family.
Last year we did not do any of these things, and the last year was rather awful, and that is quite enough of that. Not that ritual alone is going to fix things, but no harm in starting things off right... Maybe this year will be better.
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| Friday, November 22nd, 2013
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11:00 am - Usually it's tea
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This is a morning that begins with cocoa.
With syrup stirred into warmed milk until it is an even, foamflecked brown.
With liquid thick on my tongue, and sweet, and I can feel each swallow spreading like a hug from the inside out.
With the mug's solidity heating my fingertips, soaking into my palms and up the long bones of my arms.
Sometimes ritual eases heartache.
Sometimes warmth does.
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| Tuesday, November 5th, 2013
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11:25 am - the season of soup is upon us
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I was going through cookbooks this weekend, looking for inspiration (and in a more tangible sense, looking for what to put on the grocery list). One of the things I bookmarked wasn't soup.
As a category, it is probably my ultimate comfort food (alongside tea/cocoa/vanillamilk, which are only sort of foods). Once upon a time before everyone's widely varied dietary restrictions, one of the things the Venture retreat centered around was Stone Soup (which is about what it sounds like if you know the story). I grew up with my mom making potato soup (I have never been able to do that version of it right), and borscht, and split pea (which I listed as "my least favorite food" as a small child, and another year requested for my birthday dinner), and the soup that is made of semi-random things that you have in the kitchen and pantry. I make that last kind a lot. It is usually delicious.
Especially this time of year, when it is getting cold, and dark, and soup is warm and uncomplicated and you can always add another potato or some pasta or another can of beans so that there is always enough.
I just made chili, have plans for Ari's Potato Soup, and there's this recipe for a squash-apple one that I'm eyeing...
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| Sunday, October 13th, 2013
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10:06 pm - Nykken concert with awesome instruments
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Mom was late coming to pick me up from work, so we missed about the first 20 minutes of the Nykken concert - but I found parking that was both free and nearby, and they did let us in once we found the correct door, and it was a very small audience but very fun music. List of instruments, in order from "I think this is pretty normal" up the spectrum of unusual to "as far as we know there is only one of these" (normally there would also be an accordion, but it is being held hostage at the accordion hospital; we signed a get-well card for it):
-normal fiddle
-normal cello (albeit a bit blonder than most)
-djembe (totally appropriate for Swedish music, yes? yes. why the heck not.)
-harp (Dusty 36)
-nyckleharpa (2 of them)
-hardingfele (or Hardanger fiddle)
-cittra (Swedish zither)
-Hardanger cello (sooo pretty)
And we managed to get them all down the stairs in one trip afterwards! It was lucky that Verlene's car was close; we were all carrying a ton of stuff.
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| Thursday, September 26th, 2013
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11:59 am
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The morning after Equinox,
Our weekly fruit delivery proffers both
Late-summer plums,
Spangled, sunset-tinged,
And the first good apples of the year,
Pink-cheeked with russeting,
Firm yellow flesh sweet with autumn's bite.
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| Wednesday, August 28th, 2013
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3:16 pm - 3 things make a post
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1. The wonderful ![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) kaberett mentioned weighted blankets in a post awhile back, and the notion firmly lodged itself in my head. This past weekend, I picked up a couple packages of poly pellets from the craft store - and while I have not yet gotten around to sewing a thing (have to decide on dimensions, and fabric, and Augh The Decisions), I did transfer the pellets into gallon bags and shove them in a pillowcase, in anticipation of a stressful day at work. This is now draped across my lap and I love it so muuuuuch. Maybe at some point I will get around to the sewing part. Maybe. If I can figure out how to get the uneven-distribution part right.
2. I miss the kiwi-cam from the National Zoo. I used to love watching the kiwi run around. Now they just have a page of information about birds, which is not nearly as fun.
3. Coworker has been geeking about fountain pens at me for a bit, and now I am borrowing two of them from him for the week, to see how I like them. Note: I know I like fountain pens, but my level of expertise is much more at "write with pen" rather than "restore vintage pens" which is one of the things he's been doing. I have a pen with a medium nib that I've been using... but I like being able to write tiny, and I really can't with this one, so I am looking for something with a finer point. One of the pens on loan has a flex nib, which is iiiinteresting. The other is a vintage Esterbrook and I absolutely adore how smoothly it writes. (Also it has purple ink. Swoon.) Both pens are thicker-barreled than I am really happy with, though. There's a narrower model of the Esterbrook that I may have to keep an eye out for...
I think this thing is contagious. >.>
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| Monday, June 24th, 2013
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3:01 pm - What to do with 2 cups of ricotta:
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| Tuesday, June 5th, 2012
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9:59 am - Venus transit
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Realization: I was raised to be interested in science.
I remember watching a partial solar eclipse from the sidewalk in front of our house; I'm pretty sure I was in elementary school. It was a Big Deal - talked about at school and at home. We made pinhole projectors: crescents on the sidewalk. And Mom pointed out that all the sundapples, the bits of sunlight filtering through the leaves of the big trees, were also crescent-shaped. It was the COOLEST THING. Last month my folks made the trek northward to see the full annular eclipse; I didn't, but I did make a pinhole projector and dragged B outside with me to look at the shadows and the bright crescents. It boggles me somewhat, just how little my friends seemed to care - that to them it was kind of interesting, but not enough to get excited about or go outside to see.
We had at-home experiment kits from the Exploratorium, and dyed flowers by putting foodcoloring in the water, and made gak and Oobleck. The prize box had rocks and compasses. We went to see caves wherever there were caves (much the same as with trains), and did the junior ranger programs, and got up in the middle of the night to drive to somewhere with less light pollution for meteor showers. Dad pointed out how to find satellites in the night sky. Mom pulled out the bird books to identify new birds at the birdfeeder. And lava tubes! How those things are made is super nifty, guys! Basically, world = full of awesome.
Today my dad showed up at my desk at work with binoculars (for projection) and solar-viewing glasses, because the Venus transit is in progress. The binoculars projected an image of the sun a little bigger than a quarter, on one of the desks by the window. We could see the tiny solid dot that is Venus, and a few other little dark splodges that were sunspots (verified as "not just dust on the lens" because when projecting through both lenses of the binoculars, the two images matched). So many cool things going on at once! Projection via lenses, and sunspots, and the silhouette of Venus hanging out right between us and the sun, and catching the last chance in any of our lifetimes to see this.
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| Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
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8:09 am - pear
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pierce the resistant skin;
teeth glide through sweet, yielding, pebbled flesh
I know, I only post about fruit anymore.
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| Wednesday, December 28th, 2011
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9:36 am - Winter Fruit
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Pass by the out-of-season blackberries, attractive to the eye
but lacking sweetness, lacking depth -
This is the season of apples, pears,
Luminescent kiwis in their coats of fur,
Tangerine, persimmon, cranberry,
the last of the quinces.
Pomegranate displays rich jewels in the firelight;
it boasts of its conquest, as winter comes again
and again.
In the chill air, oranges sweeten -
a cheery bulge in the toe of a stocking,
a round firm self-contained package to wrap your fingers around,
bright sunshine bursting on your tongue in the cold dark.
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| Wednesday, August 10th, 2011
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2:29 pm - Folk music is music that people play
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I had not seen Midyne in lo these many years - maybe since before I went off to college even. Not sure. A long time. So when she had a gig yesterday that was closer to (my) home than Santa Cruz, I went. It was somewhat round-robin style with her and a handful of other singer-songwriters, in a tiny coffeeshop crammed with friendly people. Towards the end of the night, she and some of the other folks played/sang on some of each other's songs - and as someone to whom that has happened rarely, I can verify that it's way fun when other people chime in and make your music even prettier.
Midyne asked if I was still writing, playing, singing. In middle and high school I did a lot of songwriting - and then it stopped. I got busy with other things. I was no longer surrounded by people who played and sang and wrote and arranged; music stopped being the thing that I had in common with the people around me. I stopped carrying around that little blue notebook to jot down random bits of possible songs, and they stopped coming. I started listening to more music done by strangers, music done with enough polish for several layers of bureaucracy to make a living off of it. And that was never the kind of music I wrote, but I got more used to hearing it. And then there were all these other people's words available, so less need or space to make up my own. It feels like... I ran out of things to say, and part of that is I've gotten more hesitant to have what I'm saying sound stupid, trite, everyday.
One of Midyne's songs had a chorus which basically consisted of "Oh shit, I'm late. Again." That's what the song was about. That she's always running late for things. It was silly, and fun, and had the audience singing along by about halfway through. One of the guys who played last night - the (only) one who didn't join in on the playing-each-other's-music was intense and amazing, musically. And the rest of them? Well, one of them was who I was specifically there to hear. Far as I can tell, they were having a great time playing music for us and with each other. And the songs were not industry-polished. They were... real. Folk music. Music written and played by the people who are right here. Music that I probably wouldn't bother to listen to if it weren't either a)by someone I know or b)live, in a place I happen to be. (I'm realizing that this reads like their music was somehow anything other than awesome. Let me clarify: it was awesome.) I am grateful to have grown up surrounded by that kind of music, that's worth making for the joy of it. Although I have also learned to appreciate music that is beautiful or powerful or just plain fun and that isn't played by someone I know :)
It is comforting to hear that just because I've stopped writing doesn't mean I'm done writing. Midyne says she was like that too - wrote a lot in high school, and then didn't for a long time. And then picked it up again (I think she said in her 40s?). And I've always liked her songs. She says not to beat myself up too much about not writing. I think... I think I'm gonna try believing her.
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| Monday, April 25th, 2011
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9:15 pm - Spring
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| Thursday, April 21st, 2011
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3:37 pm - NaPoWriMo
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Apparently National Poetry Writing Month happens in April... 2/3 of the way through isn't too late to give it a try, right? ;) I wouldn't have thought of participating, except I ran into a community of prompts and it looked like fun. No idea if I'll follow through with this at all. In the meantime, I shall emerge from non-postingness to fling poetry of dubious quality into the internets.
( Hidden behind a cut, of course.Collapse )
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| Tuesday, August 24th, 2010
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1:10 am - Dialect meme!
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I've been having fun reading these, so I figured I'd introduce it to the rest of you and see if I get some more back ;)
Onward!
1. A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks.
Creek
2. What the thing you push around the grocery store is called.
Shopping cart
3. A metal container to carry a meal in.
Lunchbox
4. The thing that you cook bacon and eggs in.
Frying pan
5. The piece of furniture that seats three people.
Couch
6. The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof.
Gutters along the edge of the roof; downspout or drainspout going from the gutters to the ground
7. The covered area outside a house where people sit in the evening.
Porch
8. Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages.
Soda
9. A flat, round breakfast food served with syrup.
Pancake
10. A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself.
A sandwich! ;) Probably a sub. Not something I really refer to by category, though.
11. The piece of clothing worn by men at the beach.
Swim trunks
12. Shoes worn for sports.
Tennis shoes/tennies
13. Putting a room in order.
Cleaning
14. A flying insect that glows in the dark.
Firefly
15. The little insect that curls up into a ball.
Pillbug
16. The children's playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goes up while the other sits on the other side and goes down.
Seesaw
17. How do you eat your pizza?
Pick up a slice with my hands, usually keep it flat, eat it from the non-crust end. Does pizza-eating style count as dialect?
18. What's it called when private citizens put up signs and sell their used stuff?
Garage sale or yard sale
19. What's the evening meal?
Dinner
20. The thing under a house where the furnace and perhaps a rec room are?
Basement
21. What do you call the thing that you can get water out of to drink in public places?
Drinking fountain
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| Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
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2:52 pm - TREASURES!!!
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I am having this overwhelming urge to sit on my hoard and tinker with stuff, instead of doing useful things like going back to work or eating lunch.
To explain: I ordered more chainmaille stuff from The Ring Lord (internets, how I do love you). I have been obsessively checking to see if it had shipped, and then obsessively checking to see how far across the country it had gotten, for approximately the last week and a half. AND MY PACKAGE GOT HERE. I HAVE AWESOME SHINIES. SOME OF THEM ARE METAL STICKS. FROM CANADA.
...I am not at all excited about this. I am sure that you can tell. :D
Now I just get to hope that I do not hate making my own rings, as I got materials for doing so instead of getting more plain rings.... but I have COLORS! More of them! And sawblades that are so skinny I think they're going to break as soon as I touch them. Maybe I should have gotten more of those..... >.> but yay adventures!
(Now I should go do Responsible Grownup Things so I can play with my new toys later. Boo.)
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| Thursday, January 29th, 2009
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2:21 pm - Would you like some neurotoxins with your high fructose corn syrup?
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"Product labels listing HFCS as a first or second ingredient may contain detectable levels of mercury if the HFCS was manufactured with mercury grade chlor-alkali chemicals"
The Environmental Working Group just published an investigatory study wherein they found significant mercury contamination at 2 of the 3 HFCS manufacturing plants they tested - as high as 0.57ug/g HFCS! They do the math in the article, which I have linked below, but for a person who consumes less than 50g of HFCS per day (the US average apparently) this can equate to 28ug of mercury as a daily exposure rate, comparable to mercury amalgam dental fillings, which are no longer recommended for children or pregnant women. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin, forming organic compounds which can cause severe damage to developing brain tissue. The investigators believe that mercury may be introduced during the manufacturing process, from the caustic soda and hydrochloric acid which are produced from mercury chlor-alkali batteries, and are used to produce HFCS during 'wet-milling'.
Obviously 45 samples from three plants is not enough to hang the industry with, but they have not yet received funding to further pursue this evidence.
http://www.ehjournal.net/content/pdf/1476-069x-8-2.pdf
This is important. Go read it.
A public health watch dog group took it a step further and looked for mercury in commercial products produced with HFCS
http://www.healthobservatory.org/library.cfm?refid=105026
"In fact, we detected mercury in nearly one in three of the 55 HFCS-containing food products we tested. They include some of the most recognizable brands on supermarket shelves: Quaker, Hunt’s, Manwich, Hershey’s, Smucker’s, Kraft, Nutri-Grain and Yoplait."
--The above text is copied directly from this post. A lot of you will have already seen this because you're also friends with Sara - but others of you are not, and I wanted to get the word out. She also mentions the HFCF industry's response to the first study, and a letter writing campaign and other links (or just go to http://takeaction.oceana.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11215)
As for me... I have letters to write and ingredient lists to read. I'm giving up high fructose corn syrup for the time being, probably to be reevaluated in a few months. So far it's been a bit of a mixed bag between "oh good, that has real sugar in it after all!" and "oh drat, I live in an area for which the Girl Scout cookie supplier uses HFCF."
Speaking of which - if anyone has a young friend or relative selling GS cookies, and lives in an area supplied by Little Brownie Bakers (rather than ABC), please let me know!
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| Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
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10:44 pm - Fshfshfshfshfshh!!!!!
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I got a fishy! He's a blue-and-white (and pinkish and a bit silvery) delta-tail betta. Now there will be something alive in the house besides me and plants while I'm working! This is a happy thing.
He is not very good at posing for pictures. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that he's very good at dodging ;p
This one came out pretty well, though:
And he ate his dinner right up, and begged shamelessly for more! None of the "what? is this food? I can spit it out!" games that Jessie's Rio played.
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| Tuesday, January 13th, 2009
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7:57 pm - Someone...
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...knows me entirely too well ;p
So, I got home yesterday and discovered a box waiting for me. "What is this?" I wondered. "I haven't ordered anything. My relatives sent Christmas gifts to my parents' house (or to Laurann's so my parents wouldn't lose them before Christmas, but that's almost the same thing). But it has my name on it..."
Friends and fellow LJ-ers, it was TEA! Tasty tasty rose tea that I have been meaning to buy for myself for... well... three years now. I keep not getting around to it.
"Because you will just keep forgetting..." the card said.
Whoever you are, you are wonderful, and I love you, and I definitely did a happy squeedance in the middle of my living room upon opening said box :)
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| Friday, November 14th, 2008
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8:31 pm - Not all change comes easy
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In at least four cities in Georgia, tomorrow, people will be protesting CA Prop 8. Five cities in New York. Three in Iowa. Another 6 in Oregon, 4 in Kansas, 2 each in Hawaii and Alaska. And in the four states that jumped on the one-man-one-woman bandwagon this year - Florida, Arizona, Arkansas, and California - another 14, 4, 4, and 58 cities, respectively. To clarify: those are the ones that can be found on jointheimpact.wetpaint.com.
This is crazy. Nationwide (and some international) response to what was thought to be a statewide initiative. I don't know how much difference it'll make - probably not tons, in terms of Prop 8 itself. But it'll be interesting to see where this goes.
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| Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
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12:04 am - Happy things from today
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-peach&rose Italian soda from the Bistro. yummmmm. And wandering through the botanical garden afterward and finding a rose that smelled like my drink tasted!
-harp doodles, and playing with Jess
-Angles/IV/CS lunch with awesome people
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