Heroes and Demons

alternatives

2012-02-24T15:21:00.000-08:00

Cone sorter at Baskin-Robbins: because somebody has to keep the sugar cones, waffle cones, and old-school cake cones separate and orderly.
book scrubber at the library: I know you've opened a book, found pages stuck together, and thought, "Perfect. Somebody sneezed in here, and I'm going to get H1N1 before I figure out who killed the delivery guy in Chapter Four." Don't you wish someone were sanitizing those pages for your protection?
Sweeping the bakery: My only experience doing actual baking is in my own kitchen, so I doubt I could get a position making actual food, but I had a temp job in high school sweeping a warehouse, and another part-time job which sometimes required me to clean a shop, so I have some useful background in sweeping. Plus, getting permeated with bakery aromas will render me irresistible, even while earning dirt wages.
Designing the Wipeout courses: after "Mars Astronaut," this is my ideal job. It combines my love of bizarre machinery and bright colors with my general animosity towards people. Are you listening, ABC? I'm an engineer who climbs, swims, and runs--I could both design and test the courses. But especially design.
Kite demonstrator: Yes, I just want to find someone willing to pay me to fly kites all day. In my defense, this is actually a great idea. I've probably been responsible for the sale of at least half a dozen kites, and that's without really trying. If they gave me a great big kite with a company name and maybe one of those funny codes for smart phones, it would be a really unique advertising method, and I'd get to play outside all day. Everybody wins! I wouldn't even have to advertise for a kite company, but it would be nice to get an employee discount, should I decide to try for a bigger wing.
Skier/biker/climber: Sadly, I'm not good enough at any of these to go pro, but I'd be really happy if someone paid me to any of these things all day long. Even better: all of them, on some sort of rotating schedule.
Is professional sarcasm a thing?
After Wipeout Course Designer and Mars Astronaut, I think my third favorite dream job is gear tester. Someone could give me a pack full of camping/backpacking/climbing stuff, I'd disappear into the woods for a few weeks, and return ready to write reviews, take a real shower, and get a new pack full of stuff. Oh, and get my paycheck so I could eat more than what I find in the woods.
Library bouncer: I've recently learned that modern librarians don't "shush," and that modern libraries are filled with savages who have never learned the meaning of "inside voices." The weird thing is, except in movies, I've never encountered shushing librarians. When I was a kid, I never noticed a need for such a creature. People just behaved with more respect for the Library. These days, it seems like there are a lot more jerks, and not just in the libraries, but I'm afraid that a "society bouncer" would be regarded as a vigilante and get locked in a little box somewhere. I don't expect people to be silent in the library; I just expect them to not run around screaming. That's why we have Outside. And, I've heard, Grandma's House.
I'd be interested in any job that provided me with a pile of Mindstorms parts and a vague indication of a goal device (e.g. "two-wheeled rover," "person follower," or "stair-climber"). I have zero experience with robots (besides a very tangential senior project in college), but I've been playing with Legos for decades, and I became an engineer because I wanted to work with robots. So far, there have been no offers.

Tardis abuse

2012-02-21T07:23:00.000-08:00

Last night, over the course of two different dreams, THREE cars drove right over the top of my beloved Tardis to get to another parking space. Each of them damaged the top of my car, and when I went after them to get license plate numbers (and some measure of legally-sanctioned revenge), i was met with derision by the drivers and shaming ridicule by everyone else. Jerks.

If I were a person who ascribed meaning to dreams, I'd wager that these were something about bullies and my frustration of being in a powerless position. Luckily, I just think they were scary dreams about jerks hurting my nice car.

February Recipes

2012-02-13T15:49:00.000-08:00

Appalachian Trail Beef Jerky (Lipsmackin' Backpackin')
I asked for this book for Christmas because I'd like to do some more backpacking and camping, and it's easier to hike all day if you have more interesting food. I also figured it would be cheaper to make my own dehydrated meals than to buy the foil packets of Just Add Boiling Water And Hey, Presto! Stroganoff. (TM) Many of the "meal" recipes require the use of a food dehydrator, an appliance which I do not own and have not yet stolen from Dad, who has never used his (I'm pretty sure Mom bought it for him so we could sue it to make backpacking food, but we never did), so I was pretty happy to see a recipe for beef jerky that used an oven instead.

They should re-title this recipe "How to ruin fifteen dollars worth of perfectly good flank steak in only ten hours." I was really excited about the marinade; it smelled and tasted amazing. I let the meat soak in that for close to 24 hours, and left work early one Friday to start it baking at 150F (my oven's lowest setting), excited that I could take a pocketful of beef jerky to the mountain for my skiing lunch. Five hours later, I peeked in the oven, saw the dramatically shrunken strips of beef sizzling away, and went to bed. That's when I should have stopped cooking. Instead, I woke up at 3 AM, after ten solid hours of baking (and wafting marinade scent throughout my apartment) and pulled the product from the oven, carefully transferring it to a wire rack where I usually let bread and bagels cool. It seemed a little too light, and a little too crisp, but I went back to bed and tried to sleep a few more hours before breakfast. That's the first time I tried what the Red Menace and I now call "beef briquettes." Just terrible. I feel like I should eat them all to justify the cost and punish myself for not removing them from the kiln sooner. I'd like to try again with a much shorter cooking time (the recipe actually specifies 10-12 hours, but I can't imagine cooking them longer than I did could possibly result in improvement), but I think I'll have to save up my allowance for a while first.

Beverly's Chocolate Chip Cookies (101 Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipes)
Very, very good. I used dark chocolate chips because I like them more, and despite the expense, I included the recommended cup of chopped walnuts. The only difference between crisp and soft cookies with this recipe is the baking time, and I managed to get them firm and chewy with some crisp edges. It might be my new favorite CCC recipe.

Date bars (my girl Betty Crocker)
Originally, my third recipe this month was going to be something mysterious and Russian, but I had just bought some dates pretty cheap (cheap dates! HA!!) and happened to see this recipe when i was looking for something else. Turns out I needed more dates than I had, and the dates I had bought were no longer on sale when I went back for more, but the pre-pitted dates were cheaper than what I had bought, so it worked out better than expected. The dough didn't behave as I expected (the recipe advised me to blend until crumbly, but instead it became one large, cohesive mass), but I worked around that. I barely managed to get half the dough squished across the bottom of my favorite 13x9 (the one with the lid), but I did manage. The other half was supposed to be "pressed lightly" across the top of the cooked and cooled date goo (maybe I should have chopped them more finely, but I like finding pieces of date in the bars), but it was REALLY soft goo, so I pressed little bits of the dough in my fingers and spread them over the goo like a jigsaw puzzle so the goo was mostly covered and left it at that. I was pretty happy with the resulting texture. The bars were tasty, but I decided they were too soft to ship, so they did not go to the intended recipients. Instead, I get to eat them all BWAHAHAHAHA.

I just realized that maybe I should post pictures of some of this stuff. Maybe next month I'll start that.

winging it
I don't know whether to call this "clean out the fridge" pasta or "tangy tuna pasta." It could go either way. With my departure date only six weeks away, I'd like to deplete as many of the items in my fridge, freezer, and pantry as possible to eliminate them from the general moving mess (and yet, I bought four boxes of my favorite pasta brand last week because it was at an unprecedented low of $0.88/pound. It'll keep). To that end, I suspect my experimental recipes will aim at these ingredients as much as possible. While the water and pasta boiled, I tossed some diced bell pepper (red and yellow), two sliced pepperoncinis, all of the remaining capers (about 1 to 1.5 tablespoons), a big can of tuna, and a small can of olives in a skillet to heat and mingle. (I bought the last two items, but I live in an apartment--I don't have the space to stock up on things I know I'll use. Except, apparently, pasta.) While that stuff heated, I poured some lemon juice in a mustard bottle too empty to squeeze onto a sandwich, shook it like crazy, and dumped the resulting slurry into the tuna mix. Thinking that wasn't enough, I sprinkled in some kosher salt, lemon pepper, and ground mustard. When the pasta was done, I mixed everything together. Honestly, I just figured it would be edible. It turned out pretty good. Good enough that I kind of wished I'd paid more attention to amounts so I can try it again.

turtle boxes

2012-02-01T16:29:00.000-08:00

For many, many reasons, I am angry at TV for lying to me. When I was but a wee lad (ok, also when I was in high school), I had very little social interaction, and had to make most of my theories on humans based upon what I saw in various TV shows. Come to think of it, that's probably a very good reason why I didn't have more social interaction, because TV LIES. But my lonely, misbegotten youth (and adolescence) is not what brings me here to type today; it's turtle boxes.

Mom used to call them turtle boxes. Pie Aunt still does. They have told me that it's because when you used to go buy a baby turtle from the pet store (I guess that was a pretty regular thing to do, Back In The Day), they gave you a little cardboard box with a wire handle to carry the little guy home. Of course, any normal person would recognize them from scenes where they pile upon tabletops in cop shows and sitcoms, full of Chinese food.

Whenever we got Chinese food in college, it always arrived in little plastic trays, devoid of character, with an opaque black base and a transparent lid. Turtle boxes are more useful for TV because you can't see inside them, so an empty box can be used as a prop indefinitely. Somewhere in Hollywood is a prop house with a room full of turtle boxes that have never, and will never, contain any food. On a special shelf are several with variously-colored stains, carefully applied by artisans to imitate patterns created by actual duck sauce oozing down the side, or a splash of soy sauce flipped through the air by a carelessly slurped noodle. Chunks of vegetable cost extra. That opacity may explain the draw for me--there is mystery inside that box. On the other hand, the mystery for me stems from my dearth of personal knowledge. In the plastic trays, the rice was plopped in beside the meat-vegetable-sauce concoction of choice. An egg roll often nestled along one side, partially shrouded by packets of strangely colored sauces with unreadable labels. What goes in those paper boxes? Is the rice packed in the bottom, smothered in General Tso's Ambiguous Poultry? Does the rice and Szechuan Beef get loaded side-by side somehow, or does the rice get packed in tightly as a top layer, so that the box can be overturned, leaving a quivering sand castle of Manchurian Pork Candidate? And what about the egg rolls and mystery sauces? Does the turtle eat those? What if you order those funny pancake-things? How are they kept flat in a box whose non-parallel sides have dimensions less than the pancake-thing diameter? I have so many questions that I've never been able to answer, because the only times I've ever seen the turtle boxes are on TV. I have serious doubts that they exist in the real world.

I mentioned this to Gretel once, and she assured me that there was a gaping hole in my Cultural Experience, which would forever leave me wanting, listless, and unsatisfied. I assume that's because she's had food from these mysterious turtle boxes, but it's possible--even likely--that she's just messing with me.

January Recipes

2012-01-26T08:27:00.000-08:00

Toffee bars (Betty Crocker)
I was out of wax paper, and I wanted cookies, so I looked up this recipe for bar cookies. It makes an 8x8 pan of golden, chewy bars made of stuff that's probably already in your kitchen, so I didn't have to make a trip or list. I think I cut them a little early, because the edges are pretty ragged on mine, but after they've cooled completely, they still hold together well.

black beans... (source)

In November, I made black beans and rice the easy way: I cooked some rice, and dumped in a can of black beans. It was simple, cheap, tasty, and it made me happy. Everything I could possibly ask from a food. However, being a bit nutty about making stuff from scratch (partly because that's how Mom made stuff, and partly because the engineer in me wants to know how everything is made), I wanted to invest a little more effort this time around for what I hoped would be vastly improved results. I simmered those little bastards for over three hours in the biggest cast-iron vessel I own, and they still weren't soft enough. Unfortunately, it was close to 11 by then, and I wanted to go to bed, so I stuck them in the fridge (because the recipe advised that you get better flavor by storing them a day before you eat them).

...and rice (source)
The next night, I cooked some rice, sauteed some more onion and garlic, and threw in the allotted amounts, carefully measured, of rice, beans, and bean broth. I had finished the last of my chicken soup (see below) for dinner, and I looked forward to a little south-of-the-border side dish to finish my meal.

I haven't been so disappointed in something I cooked since the sour cream cookies that made me cry (normally, there would be a link here, but I can't find mention of them in my archive.). The recipe promised rich, flavorful broth and a strong aroma (yeah, I know, that's beyond my sensory capabilities anyway), and I expected at least a better result than I got from can-o-beans two months ago, but such was not the case. It was just.... there. Hours of work, two days of waiting (the beans soaked all day before cooking), for monochromatic mush. Nothing like the pictures!! And the beans are STILL too firm!!

Tonight I'm going to make some enchiladas with ground sausage, because the plan three days ago was to make something tasty to accompany my side dish, and I really liked the enchiladas I made last time. The BB&R recipe only used a cup and a half of the damn beans, so I'm going to try a couple bean enchiladas, too. I have to use that mess somehow, because as disappointed as I am, I still have to use all the food I buy. It is both a compulsion from childhood, and a fervent need to train myself to eat on a tiny budget, as I might be unemployed soon. I'll probably have to make some burritos or fajitas, too. Look for those next month.

Winging it: chicken soup, take two
In November, I made up my own chicken soup recipe, because the recipes I found in the books I had were rather vague about the steps I didn't understand, and very specifically did things I thought were stupid (e.g., after cooking the entire chicken for hours in a pot full of veggies, discard veggies. Then add new veggies to the soup. Utterly inane.). I decided to give it another go this month, because winter finally came to Bend, and soup sounded good. Plus, I wanted to get rid of the chicken thighs still in my freezer. This time, I paid even less attention to the recipes in my books. Some of my changes I really liked; I sauteed the diced chicken, then added the veggies, rather than boiling the veggies in broth. They were not as tender this way, but I liked the crispness. I also liked the addition of mushrooms, but I generally maintain that you can't go wrong by adding mushrooms. However, without the usual boiling step, I didn't have an opportunity to add bay leaves, which my dad assures me is a welcome addition to any soup or stew. I regretted not adding them, but only because I know I should. Either my palette can't detect the effects of bay leaves, or I did ok with my own slapdash seasoning, because whatever I made turned out very tasty.

the cat has been de-bagged

2012-01-13T14:34:00.000-08:00

Today my boss announced to the rest of the office that I would be leaving. One smartass, upon mention of Gretel, commented that "we know who the real boss is." Such is not the case; she doesn't want to move this far from her friends and family, and being acutely aware of my isolation, I can't fault her for that. I only hope that someday she will consent to living close to mountains as well as our shared circles of people.

They know that I'll be gone by the end of the quarter, possibly sooner. Only my boss knows that I may be gone in as little as two and a half weeks. It's a little stressful because I have to use every spare moment putting things in boxes and wondering why the hell I have so much crap, when I'd rather use that time to read, write, or go for an after-work run or hike. I've posted some furniture on Craig's List, I've started collecting personal effects from my cube, and I've given an inordinate amount of thought to details like mail forwarding, route planning for the drive east, and how much stuff I may have to give away or store at Dad's house until I have room for it.

I love this city. I hate cities, and I love this city. I love the Deschutes National Forest, the High Cascades, skiing on Bachelor, biking to Sisters, climbing at Smith, hiking in the mountains, and floating quietly through town in an inner tube on hot summer days. I love the local restaurants and food trucks I've discovered, and the mind-boggling variety of local brews. I will miss all of it, terribly. When Hansel asked me this summer why I would ever want to leave, I told him that there was only one thing that could convince me to give up Bend. His sister smiled to herself.

My boss has told me that if she dumps me, he will take me back.

December recipes

2012-01-09T10:49:00.000-08:00

Molasses and Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (source: the chocolate chip cookie book)
I ran out of cookies the day before I planned to go to the grocery, which was only a problem because I was out of vanilla. Last month, when I made the Cookies Of Sadness, I tried just a dash of almond extract instead (because I had just realized I had neglected to replenish my depleted vanilla supply). I could taste it, just a little, but it did nothing to help the cookies. Sad that I would have no cookies for my lunch, I flipped through the cookie book and happened to find this recipe, which on top of using molasses (tasty!), required no vanilla. SCORE!

They were ok. They have an interesting flavor (really--I'm not just saying that to be diplomatic about saying they were awful), and the molasses, ginger, and cloves give them a nice aroma when they are warm (a normal person could probably smell them the rest of the time), but they spread a lot when baking, and end up wafer-thin in places. Somehow, they are both crackly when you bite, and chewy when you chew. They're good, but I'd like to get more thickness out of them before I put them in the regular rotation.

Horrible Hybrid Chili (source: two recipes from crock pot cookbook)
I've decided to call this Hybrid chili for two reasons. First, it's an amalgam of two similar recipes which were side-by-side in this book. I figured I couldn't go wrong by putting more stuff in chili. Second, instead of two pounds ground beef, I used (roughly) a pound each of deer and elk. Mmmmm, mountainy. I only call it Horrible because I like the alliteration.

Cajun Pizza Sauce (source: pizza book)
An object lesson in reading all instructions long before you plan to make something. Luckily, I'm a detail-oriented nerd and former Boy Scout who knows to Be Prepared. I started a triple batch of dough, and after it began its three-hour rise, I started the sauce--which cooks for over two hours. I'm still not sure why you add two cups of water, then "cook until sauce thickens," when not adding the water would be more expeditious, but we did. We also (Gretel acted as sous chef for the sauce) added the minimum recommended amount of Tabasco sauce to appeal to the broader tastes of those joining us for dinner that night. The sauce by itself had a pretty strong flavor, but in use on the pizza, I wished we had added a little more. Three pies were made that night: a margherita variant with fresh basil, tomato slices, and fresh mushrooms, and two seafood pizzas with mushrooms, canned shrimp, and canned crab meat (I couldn't find a better option at the local grocery, but they sufficed, though this particular crab meat did not add much flavor)--one with anchovies and one with basil. All were very good, and drew heavy, repeated praise from one guest, who might have been a little drunk.

winging it
um.... I don't think selecting pizza toppings qualifies here, but it's all I had time to do. It was a busy month, and fewer meals in my own apartment mean less opportunity for experimentation.

migration

2012-01-04T10:59:00.000-08:00

This long-overdue post was inspired and partly composed almost four years ago. My laptop was inaccessible at the time, so I jotted a couple key thoughts on a scrap of paper to preserve the idea for later. Since then, I've rediscovered that scrap several times while cleaning my apartment, and hadn't yet gotten around to writing the actual post. It's amazing to think about the random things I keep. I decided it's finally time to take care of this particular post because pending events in my life have led to a re-examination of what led me to that hotel room.

Somewhere in Nebraska, the wind blew hard enough to rattle the hotel room's window in its frame and scream at the gaps. I had started the day at my uncle's place an hour west of Chicago; early in the morning he had dropped me off where we had parked my rental truck for the night and I started driving again, spending the bulk of my morning white-knuckled as I navigated an Iowa blizzard, casting wary glances at semi rigs which had turned backwards and upside down in the ditch to my right. Others lay dead in the median, beached like hopeless whales, their tires pointing in no useful direction. These were vehicles driven by experienced men who had spent years hauling heavy loads in all conditions, and I passed them by with my worldly possessions within thirty feet of my shoulder blades, my tiny Tardis packed to the gills and strapped to a trailer somewhere behind me. It was unnerving.

Nebraska hates gladiators.

Once clear of the blizzard, I pulled in to an Arby's and grabbed a bag of five "roast beef" sandwiches for whatever alliterative price was the fad at the time. My plan was to have a couple warm for lunch, and eat the rest cold for dinner hours later, to minimize both my costs and my down time. Dinner came a couple hours before I found the hotel in Nebraska, where I finally stopped after twelve or fourteen hours of driving, legs stiff and tired from the monotony. I put as much gas in the tank as I could (most gas pumps will limit your purchase to $50) before finding a room for the night.

A couple people had asked whether I wanted company for the trip. Dad and Wankerbitch had each offered to share the drive, help unload the truck, and fly back home afterward, but I wasn't sure how much I was allowed to file on the expense report for the move, nor even how much space would be left in the truck for another person once we had finished packing it (my TV ended up strapped in the only passenger seat), so I ultimately chose to make the journey alone. For the most part, I think I made the right choice. I could wax philosophic and say that four days of driving (often through areas with, at best, a single radio station) gave me a time to reflect upon the change in my life, and how the solitude of the drive might have prepared me for the solitude of living three time zones away from everyone I knew, but that's bullshit. If I reflected upon anything, it was how much I wished U-Haul had CD players in the dash, how unbelievably flat and dull vast tracts of the nation are, and how much I wanted a real meal instead of another fast food facsimile.

A barren road and creepy haze somewhere in Utah or Idaho.

The truth is much simpler: it was boring as hell. I've made long trips with Dad before. I knew sitting still that long would be harder for him than it was for me, though for reasons more physical than psychological. I knew that Wankerbitch would be driven by the same insanity that grips me on long drives, and we would both try to take ever-longer shifts at the wheel to give each other a longer break, and whenever one of us wasn't driving, he would go slowly mad with the ennui of not driving, thinking that he should be contributing more to the effort. Gretel was never an option. She wasn't able to get the time off work, and although she probably would have happily accompanied me otherwise, the long, cold hours and brutal crosswinds would have tried her tenuous patience, and she wouldn't have been much help carrying my couch up the stairs.

On the other hand, another person in the cab would have given me a better reason to stop more often. I don't mind pushing myself further than is necessary, but I don't like to do it to other people. With another person's stomach in mind, I probably would have stopped at one of the two opportunities in eastern Oregon to get food instead of subsisting all day on handfuls of Dad's trail mix and the cookies Gretel made for my departure. Both were delicious, but after eight hours of only those items to sustain me following an early breakfast in Salt Lake City, I couldn't stand them any more. Another person could have sliced the cheese in the cooler so I wouldn't have to do it myself during a three-hour stretch when pressing the radio's Seek button resulted only in two full trips around the dial before settling on the same static as when I started. If another person drove, even if only for an hour or so a day, I could read a couple chapters or lean my head against the window in a groggy stupor without worrying about staying between the lines.

Sometime in the next few months, I'm going to make that drive in the opposite direction. It is entirely likely that I won't see anyone from the east side of the country before that happens. Gretel and I spent some time at Dad's house between Christmas Eve and New Year's, and the last thing he said when I left was "let me know if you need help moving." I don't know why, but it hit me hard. It might have been the memory of that first drive, and the night in Nebraska with the wind screaming at the windows, or the thought that four incredible years in central Oregon will soon be behind me, or the much simpler, obvious fact that Dad would drive across the country to help me and spend some time together, however banal and taxing it might be. For a moment between his door and Gretel's car, my face twisted and my eyes stung, but I pushed it away as I climbed into the passenger seat. She never noticed. I think I'll invite him along for the next move.

Green Harvest

2011-12-21T08:54:00.000-08:00

Bend is flanked by the enormous, lovely, and sometimes ethereal Deschutes National Forest. We venture into it to hike, bike, camp, fish, climb, play, and once a year, cut Christmas trees. I've never known anywhere else where you could do this, and I love it. It evokes an earlier time when every Christmas tree was one harvested from the forest; when trees looked real, instead of being perfectly manicured, lush ornaments so thick with needles that it's difficult to reach the trunk so you can lift the damn thing into its stand, or wrestle it through doorways.

I've only taken part in this tradition once; I live in an apartment which is always unoccupied over the holidays, and I'm the only one who goes in there with any regularity, so there's really no point in my getting a tree, but early in my time in Bend I was invited for an office outing so the expatriate Brits could get their trees.

We are not a lawless hinterland. You have to pay $5 for a permit, and there are regulations about the size of tree you can cut, how far from the road it must be, and how low to the ground you have to cut the tree--you can't cut down a forty foot Ponderosa because you like the look of the top eight feet.

I love that we're allowed to harvest our own trees from the forest. I'm not a gung-ho Christmas person. I don't crave holiday music, I stopped watching holiday specials when I realized they're all the same steaming saccharine heaps, and I rave in insolent rage when Christmas decorations begin appearing in pumpkin-carving season. I am by no means a religious person, but I still consider it a travesty that the prevailing opinion of the proper way to celebrate Christmas is to go directly to the nearest store, and give them all your money. I have tried, with zero success, to curtail Christmas spending on my behalf, but nobody believes that all I really want is a new wooden spoon, a backpacking cookbook, and a job. Even as a kid, my favorite part of Christmas was the stockings--small, simple gifts whose size and price had no bearing whatsoever on the enjoyment I derived from them. I am happy with a simple Christmas. I've never considered myself a big tradition person, but I like that cutting your own tree and dragging it out of the forest feels like an old, long-standing rite of the holiday.

When I went out with my co-workers to get their trees, we went en masse to the forest in a collection of trucks and SUVs. I took a small folding saw my brother gave me a couple years earlier, but there was also at least one chainsaw. Winter started dry that year, so there was no snow on the ground--I remember that some people had difficulty back-tracking to where we had parked along a rutted and rocky forest service road--but my mind was filled with images off old Christmas cards and the tins which ringed the shelves above our kitchen table, images of small family groups trudging through knee-deep snow in the height of winter, a tree lashed to a sled and pulled out by the dad or a lone farm horse, its breath clouding the cold air.

I've happily noted the forest trees in the homes of two families this year, and got the same, "oh, that thing?" response from both, as though there is some small measure of shame for the narrow trunks and sparse, spindly limbs. These are trees which do little to obstruct the view through the living-room windows. They are not the lush, bulky, and squat Douglas Firs everyone clamors over in parking lot tree dealers' stalls. Forest trees are usually pines or thinly-vegetated spruces. People will joke about their Charlie Brown trees. I don't see that. I see the trees that I usually only see in the forest. Sure, they are probably trees welcomed into people's homes primarily for their very low cost, but I like to think that it's also because these are what Christmas trees should be, in the much older Druidic tradition of celebrating nature in its more natural form.

Last night, as I ran through the richer neighborhoods above me on the butte, I saw several trees through brightly lit windows. Most of them were forest trees. And they were all sparse, spindly, thin, narrow, and beautiful. I'll never get to see trees like this anywhere else.

Hello, Darkness, my old friend

2011-12-09T10:11:00.001-08:00

Soon after moving to Oregon, I noticed one of its more subtle special traits: it is really dark here. Not during the day, when the the sun can blind you glinting off the Deschutes, or give you a wicked sunburn as you hike across the Renfrew Glacier. On clear days, the brightness of the clear blue sky alone can dazzle anyone who takes the time to glance at it. Maybe the contrast makes the night time feel even darker.

Driving through Oregon at night is a completely different experience than driving through Ohio. There are no streetlights on mountain passes, and when the roads are crusted with several inches of ice, snow, and cinder grit, there are no reflectors to mark the edges of your lane. On a moonless night, the only light to guide your way comes from your own lonely headlamps, and even then it seems darker than Ohio under similar conditions.

I love it.

Even when it's a little creepy, because the darkness makes you feel more alone, more isolated, and further from everything else than you really are, it still feels as though something very special is at work. And it doesn't just apply to lonely mountain passes.

Dad used to laugh at me when I came home from school, because after the drive from Cleveland, I'd get out of the car in his driveway and stop before I made it more than a few steps, silently staring skyward. In Cleveland, there are no stars. There is only a dull orange glow from horizon to horizon. At Dad's house, where dull auras are visible low in the sky from the two nearest towns, the view of the stars is amazing. Trees surrounding his yard help to shield the light from town, and on really clear summer evenings you can see individual points in the creamy swath of the Milky Way.

In Bend, even from the parking lot of my apartment, lightly dotted with dim yellow lamps, I can always see the stars. I moved my bed so that when I wake in the middle of the night, I can look out the window and see the moon passing between my roof and the Ponderosa pines that wreath the property. When I walk or bike through town at night, I am always impressed by how few streetlights we have, so that you can see the stars anywhere the trees don't block your view.

For four years, I've been amazed by how dark Oregon gets at night, and every time I find myself driving far from town after sunset, it strikes me again with renewed vigor. The most impressive part is that even though the darkness makes it seem more alien and intimidating, what I feel most is comfort and awe. It does not make me feel alone in the world, or horribly isolated, but secure and inspired. It makes me want to hike further into the wilderness, roll out my bed, and stare at the sky for hours.

Mine

2011-12-08T17:50:00.000-08:00

Bradley Cooper
Isaiah Mustafa
Aaron Rodgers
Johnny Depp
Ryan Gosling
Will Arnett
Joel McHale
Weird Al Yankovic
Bear Grylls
Mike Rowe
That unibrow guy at the bookstore who tried to ask her out
The guy on her soccer team who offered to tend to her needs "as a woman".
Her "husband" pillow

At first, she didn't believe that I have a list of people whom I would punch in the face, given the opportunity and damn the consequences. But I do. When she found out, she added Yankovic and McHale to her list, just because she knows I think they're really cool guys and she thought it would cause some conflict of interest for me. Nothing personal, Al and Joel. You promise not to steal my woman, and we're cool. Because seriously--I'd love to hang out some time. I know I'm not as cool, successful, or tall as you, but I love your work, and I don't smell as bad as you'd think.

Hers

2011-12-06T10:19:00.000-08:00

Bradley Cooper
Isaiah Mustafa
Aaron Rodgers
Johnny Depp
Ryan Gosling
Will Arnett
Joel McHale
Weird Al Yankovic
Bear Grylls
Mike Rowe

I don't know which is more troubling: that she has a list of guys for whom she would leave me, or that it keeps getting longer.

November Recipes

2011-12-01T12:19:00.001-08:00

I returned from Thanksgiving knowing I was in trouble, because I had three days left in November, no food in my fridge, and I had only accomplished my "winging it" recipe. Oops. Gretel, adamant in her stance that sauce and crust are not two separate recipes, said that I could allow a lighter month "because of the holiday." I considered that a test, and tried three new recipes in two nights, with varying results.

Enchiladas, or Elkchiladas (Source: Ms. Crocker)
Yes, I realize that my best source for a Mexican recipe is probably not a honky archetype in a dress from the fifties, but I'd like to learn some more Mexican dishes, and I could look up this recipe without internet, which meant I could make the grocery list without walking to the library first. Furthermore, it was awesome. I regret nothing.

A couple notes: I discovered in the middle of preparation that my oregano jar was very, very empty, and that I apparently never owned chili powder. Oops. Instead of chili powder, I used an equal amount of cayenne pepper (I don't know how they compare on the Scoville scale, but I figured the worst case scenario was that I'd have to use generous amounts of cheese and sour cream to make the enchiladas edible, and that sounded like a great idea anyway), and instead of oregano, I waved the empty bottle over the simmering sauce. In my distracted frenzy to complete the enchiladas and the Black Beans and Rice (see below) at roughly the same time, I also added bell pepper where the black pepper was supposed to go, and compensated by throwing the black pepper in when I realized the mistake. I also hung up on Gretel, because with me muttering to myself about how much longer the rice had and where the hell my oregano had gone, the conversation was floundering more than I was.

They were very filling (credit may be due in part to the meat I didn't fit into the enchiladas and instead used to fill a quasi-burrito with a leftover tortilla, and also to the pile of BBandR I had when it finished way ahead of the enchiladas), very tasty, and I think the leftovers ripened a bit in the fridge and became more spicy than the originals, which was a welcome and delicious surprise. I may use this method to consume all of the ground elk still in my freezer.

Black Beans and Rice (source: here, but not really)
In high school, I went on a trip to Costa Rica. This dish was not my favorite experience of that adventure, but it's the only one relevant right now. They serve it with every meal, and if the beans aren't already mixed with the rice, the first thing you do is stir them together with your fork. The second thing you do is splash some Tabasco across the top. Ever since that trip, I've thought about what a great dish it was, and somehow I've never gotten around to making it. Recently I've realized that I may soon enter a chapter of my life wherein I need to sustain myself on pennies a week, and a dirt cheap dish like this which provides carbs, fiber, and protein would be good to know. When I did a little research, I got really ambitious and selected the above recipe because it was straightforward, but seemed to offer some interesting palate complexity. I even thought I could make real black beans, but to do that properly, you need two or three days, and I had a deadline too close to allow that. I figured a can of beans would do for this first trial.

Then I got run down during the day (emotionally, not by a truck), there was an issue with rinsing the rice that accidentally sent a lot of in into the sink, and my kitchen got too small while dishes stacked up from the enchiladas, and when the rice was sort of ready, I figured "Screw it," and dumped the can of beans straight in, stirred it together, and let it sit there warming while I finished the enchiladas and stuck them in the oven. No fancy garlic stuff, no extra seasoning, just culinary desperation and fatigue colliding spectacularly in a dichromal mess on the back burner.

It was wonderful.

I still intend to try to make "real" black beans, and to do the more interesting version linked above, but I also know that I can cook a cup of basmati, dump in a can of black beans, and with or without hot sauce, I can be pretty happy for a few meals. I also think you could add a little bacon.

Honey Chocolate Chip Cookies (source: the cookie book)
In my own quest to create the ideal chocolate chip cookie, I've been toying with another recipe from this book and using some honey instead of some of the brown sugar. The result (despite not reducing other liquids, as I later learned I should have) is fantastic. Flavorful, good texture, and it stores well. I'm not finished yet, but they're already pretty wonderful. When I saw "Honey Chocolate Chip Cookies" in the book, I figured it was a guaranteed winner.

Don't judge a recipe by its ingredients.

I won't say that it was a waste of delicious honey, because I'm too cheap/poor to throw them away instead of eating them, but they are kind of terrible. The dough is far too wet, so as they bake, the cookies nearly become puddles. I put 23 cookies in the oven, and only 22 came out. One of them was extremely large. A couple others became conjoined, but I was able to successfully separate them. There's no real flavor (one sheet got a little overdone, so they taste a bit burnt, but that doesn't count.), so the cookies are more like a Soylent matrix to support the chocolate chips. You'd be better off just eating the chocolate chips.

A mark will be made in this cookbook. A black mark. And we will never visit this recipe again.

Winging it
Chicken noodle soup, bitches!

Sure, I didn't render a real chicken unto broth and bits, but the recipes I found on that front were unhelpfully vague, and some even advised discarding the cooked veggies once you had extracted the broth. Morons, that's soup parts!! Instead, I used bouillon (until figure out how to render a chicken) and cooked some cut-up thigh meat in a Dutch-oven-deep skillet, added some celery, onion, and carrot, bay leaves, etc. I had some ditalini pasta and... that's where things went a little sideways.

I had no idea how much pasta the soup could handle, but I threw in about half the box, stirred well, and thought, "there's a lot of room left over, and ditalini is really only good for soup." Thus reasoned, I dumped in the rest of the box.

Then the pasta ate my soup. The result was more like goulash than soup, but it was effing delicious. A couple days later, I embarked upon a very cold and windy hike. That morning, I filled my Hydroflask with hot tea, and my food flask with re-heated soup supplemented with extra bouillon-broth. Five and a half hours later (in temperatures that froze my Nalgene shut twice), my tea was so hot I could only sip it, and the soup was still nice and warm. I take the blame for the soup--I should have let it boil a little longer before bottling it. Still, it was great to have soup on a cold hike, and it was still damn tasty. I think it's one of my best efforts at making up a recipe. I just need to remember how I did it.

Heel

2011-11-21T13:28:00.001-08:00

Fair warning: this may get maudlin.

I don't want a dog anymore. The desire for a canine companion has been a mainstay for as long as I can remember. My biggest reason to get a house is that houses come with yards, and if you have a yard, you can get a dog. But after seeing my brother's dog the other day... I just cant do it.

My brother has a house. He has a dog, which he got in high school, for one random good report card, or some such similar bullshit. He got the previous dog because he begged to have one for ages, and finally got a beautiful, if somewhat loopy, chow-shepherd-collie mix for Christmas. Our first dog was my big brother, the smartest, most loyal and wonderful dog I've ever known. My parents had had him for years before I was born, and were worried that the dog might try to hurt the baby. One day, when Mom chased a very young me around the front yard, he misunderstood my joyful screaming and got between Mom and I, ready to tear her asunder if she made a threatening move. We never again questioned his motivations; chief among them was Protect The Boy. When one of Mom's aunts, unknown to him, tried to walk me around the yard to occupy time while everyone else got ready for an evening outing, he took the wrist of the hand that held mine in his mouth before we were twenty feet from the front door. He did not bear down; this was only a warning. He was letting her know, as gently yet firmly as possible, that she was Unknown to him, and that she would go no further with his boy.

He got hip displasia, as many shepherds do. He had trouble walking, or climbing the stairs to the back porch. Hair fell from his haunches, leaving him nearly hairless and sick looking behind his ribcage. Dad had him put to sleep one day while I was at school. He was buried before I got home. They told me that he had been "put to sleep." Days later, when I finally came to realize that he was dead, I cried for the rest of the night. I still miss him terribly, and find it difficult to talk about him.

The chow-shepherd-collie mix was meant to be my brother's dog, but I trained her, fed her, and walked her. Mom and I knew that no matter what my brother believed, she was my dog. One day, while I was at an amusement park with friends, my brother rode his new bike across the road to show it to the neighbors. In his excitement, he forgot to tie her up, and she followed him. The man whose truck hit her felt awful, and not only apologized profusely, but offered to drive her to the vet. I got home from having fun all day to discover that my dog was dead. I was excused from participating in class the next day because ... I just couldn't.

When I started college, I found out that Mom was going to get him another dog if he got his grades up. My grades were always good, but I never got a dog for them. Let that be a lesson to you, kids: consistently high performance is expected, but modest improvement is rewarded. Work below your potential until you want something. I told her not to do it. I wouldn't be there to take care of his dog, and we both knew that he wouldn't. He had assured her that this time would be different. It wasn't.

When I dropped out of college to take care of Mom, I took care of his dog, too. One of the two hours each day that I didn't spend at Mom's side was spent walking my brother's dog. It was good for both of us. I got a chance to go outside, and she got to leave her pen (because he never taught her "come," "stay," or where her yard ended, she had a tendency to run away for several hours at a time if she was not contained). It was the only time she got to go out and play. He never did anything with her. I fed her. I implored. I expounded. I threatened to find her another home, with someone who would actually take care of her. He cried that I couldn't do that with "his dog." He promised to do more, and never did.

When he moved out, she effectively became Dad's dog. He is sterner with dogs than I am, but I suspect it was also the high point of her furry life. Dad walked her every day, sometimes twice, no matter the weather. When he did yardwork, he would tie her line to his wheelbarrow or a nearby tree, and she got to hang out with him all day. I've never seen her respond to commands so well as she did with Dad. When my brother moved in to his house, he came back for "his" dog. I know she and Dad missed each other, even if there's no way to find out from either one. When I come back home, I don't think "I should go visit my brother," I think "I should go to my brother's place so I can visit the dog." It always makes me sad when I arrive, because the dog that they got together has a favored position and her run of the place. The dog he had before the succubus ate his soul is tied behind the barn, where she can't even see people. She loves people. People might want to scratch her ears. I go out to visit her, give her love and attention, and brush her fur (I don't think anyone else ever brushes her). She is always happy to see me, but maybe she doesn't recognize me. Maybe she is just happy to see someone who might want to rub her belly.

When I saw her Saturday afternoon, I thought I might be sick. She looked like a caricature of a dog skeleton that someone had wrapped tightly in fur. Were it not for the lush, matted coat, she would have looked worse than Mom did at the end. I could see projections of bone I never would have guessed existed in a canine skeletal structure, because there is usually so much tissue in those areas that you can neither see nor feel such lumps and spires. I could see them on her from across the yard. When I asked my brother what was wrong, he gave me a "what are you gonna do?" shrug and told me he had been giving her more food than usual. The other dog seemed to have gained weight--I suspect she is stealing from her predecessor. The succubus also brushed off my concerns. "The vet wants to run a bunch of expensive tests." Run the fucking tests. Find out what is wrong, and fix it. At the very least, let her have a loving, warm home in her final days. Don't leave her to rot behind the barn or I will feel compelled to visit wanton violence upon your person. Seeing her like that kind of made me hate both of them. If anyone else in their family--including the dog they got together--needed the tests, I suspect the problem would have already been resolved.

I had no appetite. When I finally left, I called a couple local friends and flew kites for two hours just to try to cheer myself up. I hoped that they might want to adopt a dog. I would have paid her vet bills if they were willing to provide a hospice home, but after their dog died a few years ago, they have come to enjoy the freedom of neither kids nor a dog determining their time.

I started to think about the dogs who have been in my life--even those that belonged to entirely different people--and how awful I felt at their loss, especially if I was witness to great pain or long illness. Seeing my brother's dog tied behind the barn, a grim shadow of her former self, made me want to sob uncontrollably, kidnap her, and pummel the happy couple. I did none of those things. Instead, I gave her every spare moment I had while at his place, constantly reminding her that she was a good dog, very pretty, and that I loved her. My grief over the death of dogs I've known has sometimes surpassed what I felt over the deaths of people I've known. I don't think this is as odd as I probably should. Generally speaking, I like dogs more than people.

Dogs have taught me about loyalty, friendship, and taking care of the people you love. The black dog behind my brother's barn, excited to see someone coming to pet her even though she can't weigh more than half what she used to, adds "Strength in adversity" to the list. Hearing other Good Dog stories through the years is about the only thing that can sucker-punch me into an emotional reaction.

I love dogs. I grin like a fool just seeing them run and jump. When I go to a party, it is entirely likely that I will spend all my time with the dog and talk to people only to discern where I can find the bathroom, the drinks, and a tennis ball. If I meet you and your dog in the park, I will not recognize you without the dog the next time we meet. If you have the dog upon our next meeting, I will remember the dog's name, age, breed, and favorite toy. I will remember that you belong to that dog, and little else about you. I smile at people out walking their dogs because I like the dog, and only later wonder whether the lady with the sprightly whippet thought I was flirting with her.

...ok, I still want a dog. Just not right away. I'm not ready for it yet.

low praise

2011-10-28T08:12:00.002-07:00

We're having a cookout at work today. It's great for a wide variety of reasons not least of which is Free Elk. I also like that with all the time I spend setting things up, (maybe making a grocery run to get everything my boss forgot,) making burger patties, working the grill, and cleaning up afterward, I get to spend close to three hours away from my desk. It's fantastic. Plus, Free Elk.

The last time we did this, I even heard my boss tell the COO that "we have someone here who's really good at making burger patties." Hollow praise, I know, but... I take what I can get.

Which brings me to the real point. Everyone here is pretty vocal about their praise of my burger patties, grillwork, and deft hand at making liquid nitrogen ice cream. We made some last week, and from the moment the decision was made a few days earlier, I got frequent questions about when, how, and what flavors would be made. They were all very excited about this small feat, and told our visiting guests what a great cook I am (even though what I did that day was the exact opposite of cooking). It's nice, but I often wonder what it would be like to receive praise and recognition for my actual job.

I overslept a little this morning, and in the brief period between silencing the alarm and remembering thirty-eight minutes later that I had done so, I had a dream. I was on some sort of academic decathlon team (not an option when I was that age, but I've since been jealous of kids who get to work in teams to solve all sorts of interesting puzzles with their collected effort and mental prowess) with people I knew in high school. For some reason, we were working out of my office, but in the warehouse area, which was ten or twelve times larger than in real life. It had been cordoned off with huge sheets of tarpaulin hung from the ceiling to make halls and workspaces for all the teams. After wandering my way clear to the back, where my group was working in their sharp-looking team shirts, one of them excitedly greeted me with a task. Pointing to a small heap of clothing, she asked, "Can you do the ironing thing you're so good at?"

You don't hear it suggested often, but maybe I should quit my day job. I could be someone's house boy. Apparently, that's my skill set.

October Recipes

2011-10-27T16:45:00.005-07:00

Dad bought me a food smasher one year for Christmas. I was fascinated by the possibilities, but a combination of lack of knowledge on how it might be successfully utilized and a dearth of canning jars kept me from doing anything with it for a long time (I have a recipe for apple-pear chutney that I think would benefit from some food smashing, but I feel like I should make it the normal way first, and I have no idea what sort of volume will be produced). This month, I bought a Cinderella pumpkin (a reddish variety known to be good for pies) and fed it to the smasher-matic.

Pumpkin Pie (source: Betty Crocker) with Press in Pan Crust
Gretel will complain that these are not two separate recipes, even though they are, but there are at least two others this month, so she shouldn't complain much. The recipe used canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling, which is pre-seasoned), but mentioned that 1.75 C fresh cooked pumpkin could substitute. When I first looked at the pile of pumpkin chunks after I finally finished cutting it into pieces, it was heaped above the brim of my very largest pot. I was afraid I'd have pumpkin pies for six or eight weeks. Luckily, boiling and smashing the chunks significantly reduced the volume.

The press-in crust was much easier to make than the kind I've used in the past, and requires no rolling or wax paper, which is a huge bonus. I topped the pie with crushed pecans and an obvious joke. It was a delicious first effort in pumpkin pie.

Spicy pumpkin chocolate chip cookies (source: my usual compendium of strange CCC recipes)
Honestly, I was a little disappointed in these. They were great cookies--very soft, maybe just a little sticky (I almost said "a hair sticky," then thought better of it)--but I didn't think they tasted like pumpkin (or pumpkin pie, despite using almost the same seasoning), and they certainly weren't spicy. I sent some to Dad, and he said he could definitely taste the pumpkin, so maybe it's just my problem. Still, I expected more.

Pumpkin Bread (source: bread book)
Another recipe that promised more than it delivered. The bread was definitely orange-colored, but that was it (aside from a tendency the crust had to separate from the loaf). It was not "sweetish" as the book described. It might have smelled interesting, but I wouldn't know. I used it for lunch sandwiches until it was gone, then I made biscuits for dinner, because they're easy and satisfying. Make your own joke.

Winging it: beef and noodles
Yeah, there are dozens of real recipes for this, but the real goal was to see if I could wing it through cooking a big lump of beef in the crock pot. I rubbed the outside of a "bottom round roast" with Jamaican jerk seasoning, dropped in the Crock, added 8 oz fresh mushrooms and a cup of beef broth. Eight or nine hours later, I cooked some egg noodles and tossed them with about half the beef, after slicing it into chunks and shredding it a little.

Next time, I'll use a real recipe.

The beef was bland (what a waste of that wonderful Jamaican spiciness), and a little dry, which is surprising since usually anything that comes from the crock pot falls apart instantly into big steaming piles of tasty stuff. I was even surprised at the effort involved in shredding the beef, since I didn't even expect to be able to remove it from the crock in one piece, and ended up going at it with a large knife before the forks could break up the smaller chunks. The bigger disappointment is the other half of the beef: I still have to eat that somehow, and I already know it will be more a chore than a happy evening of tasty leftovers.

scratch

2011-10-13T08:44:00.000-07:00

Hansel and Gretel came to visit over Labor Day weekend (they did eat my candy house, but they did not stuff me in the oven. I knew the trails we hiked, so nobody had to drop breadcrumbs in the forest). Before their visit, I spent time during meetings at work jotting down ideas of what to feed them. I needed things that I could make relatively easily, or activities that would wear them down quickly so I'd have more time to make something more involved. Plus, I got to think a lot about food, although that's usually a terrible thing for me to do during pre-lunch meetings at work. I'm pretty sure my co-workers can hear my borborygma.

The Oregon Cheesecake was finished before I left to get Gretel from the airport. I had already made granola and cookies. The two of us had a disappointingly bland salmon and shrimp pasta that night. Hansel had some leftovers when he arrived several hours later. Over the course of the rest of their visit, we had scones, three pizzas (that was a big night--I still had leftovers after they had gone), Greek pasta salad, and bacon cinnamon rolls. Hansel took some of the bread we had used for sandwiches for his wife. One afternoon, Hansel mentioned that he had been there for two days and hadn't yet eaten something I didn't make. "Do you buy any food?" "I bought that flour. Does that count?"

Gretel told her brother that I was just showing off. That's not really true. Granted, sometimes when I make something, I wonder if it's actually as good as I think, or if my judgement is clouded because I'm so happy that I didn't set anything on fire that wasn't supposed to be burning. It's nice to have another person's opinion to verify. But when I can get away with it, I pass off my stuff as something I've purchased. I don't actually say that; I just let people assume what they would naturally assume. I think it's the best way to get an honest opinion. If someone knows you made what they just ate, they are less likely to say "that tastes like goat anus," even if that's what they think. However, if they think you got it from the Bitter Muffin Bakery or some other fine establishment, they may feel it is safe to warn you, "I don't think they're using fresh goat anus. This is awful."

Besides, it's the way I was raised. When someone comes to visit you, you feed them. And feed them well. Cookie Aunt has, on a couple occasions, started making something while we talked in her kitchen just to have something to offer. When Mom was sick, and for a while after she died, Cookie Aunt would bring dinner to our house. She stopped bringing Dad lasagna when he accidentally revealed that his was better. Mom used to can fruit and vegetables for winter use. Her sisters still make jams and jellies. We make an awful lot of stuff from scratch, partly out of habit, and partly because... it's better.

I like all the food I make from scratch. I like making it. Lately, I've started to get even closer to the source materials (last weekend I made a pumpkin pie from an actual pumpkin, rather than the canned pumpkin). There are two reasons: first, I want to see if I can do it. Second is more of a historical curiosity: I want to know how to make things without the aid of lots of modern technology. I still don't own a mixer more complicated than my trusty wooden spoon, and for a long time I was probably a better cook over a fire than in a real kitchen (now it's probably an even split). Plus, after the zombiepocalypse, I'll need to know how to make food after all the canned goods are consumed.

September recipes

2011-10-07T14:44:00.003-07:00

Oregon Cheesecake (source: that pizza book) I've never made a cheesecake before, so I'm not really sure whether this one fully counts as a cheesecake. It tasted great, but I think it was a little soft. There was one other problem... the crust, which includes hazelnuts, was pressed into one of my prized cast-iron skillets for baking. However, I had a very poor idea of how thick the dough was as I pressed it, so the crust ended up being about half the thickness of the cheesecake slice. Gretel requested a knife when she ate hers. Then she made me promise to keep practicing on cheesecake.

Salmon and Shrimp Pasta (source: that pasta book from B&N) Sounded great, looked great, desperately needed salt. Disappointingly bland.

Potatoes Au Gratin (source: Betty Crocker) Dad and I made this to go with the duck (see below). We had a lot of mozzarella that was already shredded, so we used that instead of cheddar. It was excellent.

Winging it: Roasted Duck, sort of. I got some Muscovy duck from the farmers market because I wanted to try a recipe called Cast Iron Duck. Once it thawed, I discovered that instead of a few nice duck breasts (which I wanted), I had what seemed to be the front and back of the duck, with ribs, sternum, and spine all in place. Dad and I flipped through a couple old cookbooks and found some recipes for roasting a duck; we took cues from two or three of them and made up something reasonable. I scored the skin on both pieces in a crosshatch pattern, rubbed a little kosher salt and black pepper on the duck inside and out, threw some diced onion inside, and laid some thinly sliced apple over the halves of the duck. All of this was in my really deep cast iron pot (not actually a Dutch oven, but I use it as one), where I baked it until we decided it was probably done. I don't know if it was a tough old bird, or if I did something terribly wrong, but neither of us liked it much. Dad and I both resorted to clutching our halves like manic squirrels, chewing at them like corncobs. What scant meat we found was tough and uninteresting. The apples were good. The potatoes were great. The duck was... forgettable.

framed

2011-09-30T14:19:00.002-07:00

For years, that picture was in my head. It's not that it represented some sort of mystical Feminine Ideal for me, but... kind of. It's more that the image was in every way beautiful. It captivated some small part of my imagination, and for years when the idea of a beautiful girl flitted across my mind, that frame was appended as the illustrative example.

She was in a 5x7 frame in a dorm room at MIT. The two guys who lived there (and who looked far too Jock to be believable as MIT students, but plenty Jock enough to warrant one of them dating the girl in the picture) had built their own bed-lofting system, so that their couch was up on a shelf, and one of them had his bed under that shelf. A bra hung from a post at the end of the other bed, along the wall below the window, and her picture was on one of the desks. She had well-tanned skin, dark brown hair, and she held a tiger lily in front of her chin, with her head tilted over the bloom so that she looked at the camera from the top of her eyes. The shot was taken very close, so that her face and hair filled the frame. She was gorgeous, and I have never told anyone about the image, or how long it has remained in my mind.

There is a different picture now, and I've noticed that in the past year or so, the appended image has been changing from the girl with the tiger lily to the girl in the tree. The shot is not as close; you can see the tree limb behind her, but you can't tell that she's leaning against it, her feet braced on a lower, larger limb. You can see one of the park's fields behind her, where she had been flying a large and powerful kite twenty minutes earlier. There are two versions of the picture, taken a moment apart. In both, her face is slightly shaded, just enough to remove glare, but not so much as to darken her features into a blurry matte. In one, her head is held high, and she smiles widely at the camera. In the second, her head is tipped forward a little, a rivulet of hair fallen from behind her ear. The smile is not as broad, but it is better: a secret smile, meant only for the viewer. The first shows a smile for a world or a room--the second shows a smile for one single person. I can't decide which is better. I see the first more frequently, but I think of the second one more often.

It is a beautiful picture.

anachronism

2011-09-28T08:18:00.002-07:00

This is Banned Books Week. I found out because I happened to be in our library Sunday afternoon, and they had themed crosswords and buttons laying out on the counter. I can admit that I was excited about the buttons, because I've seen the "I Read Banned Books" buttons for years, and always wondered how I could get one. Now I have two (one is a gift for someone else. The surprise is now ruined), and I have been happily wearing mine to work all week.

Banned Books Week leaves me a little confused. On one hand, I love that this is a thing: bringing awareness that books get banned, even books that seem extremely benign (especially when compared to some movies and television, each of which is a much larger industry, but nobody ever tries to ban those. Weird.). On the other hand, I'm shocked that this even needs to be a thing. Seriously? People still ban books?? Are we going to burn witches next week?

neonate

2011-09-27T16:57:00.000-07:00

I'm an uncle.

That happened.

rush

2011-09-25T12:09:00.001-07:00

The first time I spoke on the phone with my current boss, I was at the airport, waiting for the first leg of a flight plan that would take me to LA for my second half-marathon. We scheduled a phone interview for the week of my return. Now I'm looking for another job, and training for another half-marathon.

Gretel has promised (threatened?) to train me for a full marathon, but won't start until we have co-habitated. I'm pretty much on my own for this run (a half marathon entirely on dirt roads and trails, with over 1,000 feet of vertical), occasionally referencing a book my uncle gave me years ago when I was preparing for my first half-marathon title "Marathon Training for Dummies." I used to joke that I only read the first half, because I only run half-marathons. This time I hop about through the book, starting with the section on injuries, because I'm prone to crippling shin splints which, once erupted, stop all running for months. That chapter introduced me to a wonderfully excruciating shin massage to administer before icing every day. I cry a little while doing it, but I think it's helping.

Each night I deluge Gretel with questions about whether I should A, B, or C when I D, especially if I didn't J, whether L is a bad idea, and if I should ever consider Q. SHe would be fully justified in telling me to stick my U up my Z. I have to ask. She's a runner; I'm just some schmuck who goes for runs. I don't know what I'm doing. And as I'm sure she's surmised by now, this field of entirely foreign knowledge is a little daunting for me. When Dad was here last week, I had a long run of eleven miles, and while I wouldn't say it was easy, it wasn't nearly as hard as I had expected. The difference between what I expected and what I felt was so vast that for days afterward, I wondered whether I had counted incorrectly, and had not gone as far as I thought I had. I have to assume that the relative ease of the accomplishment (Dad and I went on a bushwhacking hike up a nearby butte afterward, and although he took a few breaks on the way up, I felt fine) indicates that I either did something right, or something very wrong.

Yesterday I tried a new route. The website said it was a six mile loop; judging by the scale on the map, it was about five. Based on how long it took me to run the loop, it was a little over 4.5 miles. I went back that afternoon and measured it with my bike. The website was wrong. This morning, I ran three laps of what my bike tells me is a 4.8 mile loop, meaning that my training run today for next week's 13.1 mile race was about 14.4 miles. I'm a bit tired, but still walking. I'll call that a win.

Gretel has asked me (not nearly as often as I've asked myself) what my goals are for the race. I certainly don't expect to bring home any medals which read anything other than "participant." Such thoughts are ludicrous. I want to be able to run the whole route--according to the elevation profile and course description, it will be a pretty grueling trip--and feel good about myself afterward. I'd like to be able to walk comfortably the next day. That's about it. On the surface, anyway. Sometimes I wonder if I motives kept secret even from myself.

I wonder if I'm doing this for the same reason I sometimes consider running a marathon: I want to prove I can do it. I've run two other half-marathons, so the distance isn't really the issue, though I will say that I feel better physically going into this one than I did the others. For some reason, I think I'm more nervous this time. That's pretty dumb, because as I told Gretel last night, "it doesn't matter." I know it doesn't matter. Not as many people know I'm even doing this one, and nobody cares if I end up walking the last ten or twelve miles. Hell, if I showed up long enough to get my T-shirt and went back home to watch movies all day, it would be fine.

I think I'm doing it because I need a victory. Not a "hooray, best half-marathon time ever!" victory (see above, re: ludicrous), but setting myself a challenge and completing it respectably. I've been looking for jobs longer than Gretel knows--a lot longer--and and the most success I've had was a second phone interview, after which I had to tell them "No, you're four hours away from where I need to be." In fact, that's the only success I've had. Physical challenges like a brutal half-marathon with over a thousand feet of vertical are something over which I can exert some small measure of control. I can train for that, prepare myself physically and mentally, and then go do it. Piece of cake. It's not like I have to convince someone else to go to all the effort of reading my resume, sending an email, and making an offer. That sort of nonsense remains beyond my grasp. But this? This I can do.

flip

2011-09-14T06:56:00.000-07:00

I got the finger this morning because some budo fan was unhappy that I wasn't going enough over the speed limit. For a moment, I thought I was back in Cleveland.

a decade passes

2011-09-11T13:09:00.002-07:00

Yes, the internet bubbles today with posts, memories, pleas, and tributes. Yes, mine is one among millions, with a staggering readership of--at last count--about four people. However, as I've mentioned before, even though I like to think many people will read my words and find something interesting therein, this site is more for my benefit than anyone else's. With that thoroughly selfish notion foremost in my mind, these are my thoughts.

Ten years ago today, I was in college. It was Tuesday morning, and I had an early morning review session for a difficult thermodynamics test. All of my thermodynamics tests were difficult for me; although I knew that for the most part, it was just math, and math that I should know how to do, it remained just beyond the grasp of my understanding. I liked the prof, and had even been whitewater rafting with him, but I had not yet found a compromise between his recital of the methods and my absorption of them. As a consequence, I had left my room early, hoping to arrive in the lecture hall and spend twenty or thirty minutes staring plaintively at my notes and text in an effort to reduce that gap even a little before he filled the chalkboard with room-spanning equations that were, due to the limited length of our alphabet, all Greek to me and everyone else in the room. I learned more of the Greek alphabet in that class--upper- and lower- case--than I ever could have along Fraternity Row. I had been in the room close to an hour before anyone else arrived, wide-eyed with the news. "Did you hear about New York?" "Hear what?"

This was in an age before Phones Which Are Smart, when a "mobile device" was a laptop, and only doctors had Blackberries. I didn't even own a laptop at that point, and few of those who did brought them to lectures, so news trickled in with students; whoever had left for the class latest that morning had the freshest update. The department chair eventually arrived, giving us the most complete collection of data, culled from his office computer just down the hall. It felt surreal. He soberly informed us that the towers had fallen, that details were scant, but that it looked like planes had crashed into both of them. Rumors circulated that other buildings may have been hit. There was some question as to whether our city might also be a target, and planes had been grounded or locked in holding patterns. Then he briefly espoused what a fascinating engineering problem was posed by the collision points, fuel burn rates and temperatures, and estimated time to failure of various building materials.

Our prof usually entered smiling, cheerful, and enthusiastic about delving into the day's topic. Sometimes, we would look closely to see which belt loop he had missed, or whether he had tucked his shirt into the wrong waistband. That morning, he was somber, and announced simply that we had all heard the news, and that we should "get to it." I felt like he was going through motions more for his own sake than ours.

After lecture, I went to the freshman math class for which I provided twice-weekly study sessions. By then, the administration had sent word to the faculty that school was closed for the rest of the day. It was the only time during my years at college that class was cancelled, campus-wide, for the entire day. Temperatures may have been below zero, winds at twenty-five miles an hour, and snow drifting taller than the students, but we never cancelled class. I stood in the sun outside the lecture hall with the instructor, quietly talking about the news, until we finally went back to his office to try to find any website that could stream us news, video, anything, to help us make sense of what had happened, or even find out exactly what had happened. So much of it was still rumor at that point. The internet had not yet brought us live-streaming news video. We saw the same reports, over and over. I stayed more for the company than the updates.

I remember thinking, "I'm glad Mom didn't live to see this." She had died only nine months earlier, and losing her was still a fresh wound. I had come immediately back to school to bury myself in work and try not to lose any more time in continuing my life. All those people died, horribly, and my first thought was someone who had died almost a year earlier. I didn't know anyone in New York.

Ten years ago the towers fell, and our world changed. We must make sure that it only changes for the better. We have managed, in a few ways, to make the world safer. But we can't let our world become a prison. We can not live in fear. I heard a report Friday that a reporter had seen so many trucks pulled over, opened, being inspected, that she thought something had already happened, but was told that it was just security measures and screenings. If we allow ourselves to be crippled by fear and the rumor that something might happen (there had been only that much hint that something may occur on the ten-year anniversary--nothing had been substantiated), then nobody needs to attack anything. We may have reached a point where we punish ourselves for bad things that somebody else never even does.

I'm not a criminal. I would never hurt innocents. But technology is being tested that may single me out as a potential threat if I don't make eye contact, seem nervous in an airport, or otherwise don't act "normal." I haven't been normal a day in my life. I wasn't even born normally. (in for ten months, and over 24 hours of labor before they gave up and cut me out. I had so much hair the nurses could comb it.) Is it profiling to single out nervous, anti-social people? Not that I consider myself nervous, but upon arriving at a connecting airport, the first thing I do is bolt directly to my next gate, just to make sure I know exactly where it is, what food options are nearby, and that nothing has gone wrong with my schedule. It may not be nervous, but it's a little weird.

I don't want to get searched because I don't look at other people. I don't want to get put on a watch list because I refuse to let someone search me after they level the standard "homeland security" threat. Sure, I watch enough cop shows to know that the quickest way to become suspicious is to refuse a search, but it shouldn't even be an issue. I won't let myself live in fear, but if everyone else does--if the government does--the end result is the same.

August Recipes

2011-08-15T15:03:00.002-07:00

Hazelnut stuffed chicken breast (source: my Oregon cookbook, which I have not yet been able to find on the Intertubes. Or even at the store where I bought it. I'm not sure how it exists)
I'm not sure I've ever made a recipe which involved "stuffing" something, unless manicotti counts. It should, because manicotti is far more likely to suffer complete structural integrity failure than chicken breasts. The biggest risk there is messing up the cut and A) splitting the breast, B) making a flap on the bottom of the chicken breast rather than a pocket inside it, or C) bleeding all over your dinner. I managed to do the first one only a little, and the others not at all. I considered the results a pocket with two openings, and deemed it acceptable. The stuffing was a mixture of hazelnuts, chives, and cream cheese, which sounds awesome, but I think the champagne sauce (see below) may have won the Dominant Flavor Deathmatch. Maybe I should have followed the recipe explicitly and toasted the hazelnuts first, but it was late and I was ravenously hungry before I started dinner. I cooked some leftover rigatoni noodles to make a bed for the chicken, and ended up eating half the plate of bare noodles while I waited for the chicken to finish baking. By the time I actually had dinner, I barely noticed what it was.

Champagne Sauce (source: see above)
This may have been my other experimental mistake. the recipe called for the juice of one lemon. I just squirted in some lemon juice. I don't know whether I used too much, or if the champagne was overly dry, but my tongue felt a little raw every time I ate the chicken and the leftovers. I was so distracted by whether I should worry about it falling out that I couldn't even tell there was cream cheese inside the chicken Overall, kind of disappointing given how excited I was by the prospects of Hazelnut Stuffed Chicken Breasts with Champagne Sauce.. and can you blame me? it sounds PHENOMENAL. Maybe it's just that the flavors (except for the champagne) were too subtle. I tend to like flavors that jump off the plate, slap you in the face, and run out with your wallet before you figure out why your face hurts.

Blueberry Buckle (source: see above)
I had two big reasons for making this. First, the farmers' market had big, beautiful, delicious blueberries. Second, I wanted to find out what a "buckle" was when it wasn't part of a belt. Turns out it's a cake that starts more as dough than batter, and has fruit baked on top. It is also delicious. I had some cream leftover from something else, so I whipped that (whip it good!) for topping. I'd like to try it with other berries, or maybe some thinly sliced apples tossed in cinnamon.

Granola (source)
My goal was to have a dryer, crunchy granola I could use as a breakfast cereal, but this makes a chewy, slightly sticky granola that could easily be molded into granola bars (but don't expect them to hold together very well, especially in the sun). Still... I've found that the more I eat it, the more I like it. I've had it for breakfast, and it's more filling than cereals I've bought. I keep another container on my desk at work for quick snacks during the day (or a handful before I leave work to run). There's another recipe at wikihow I'd like to try, and then I may start trying some customized variations, once I get the hang of the Dry Stuff to Binder ratios.

Fancy Pancake (source: Lodge Cast Iron cookbook)
Similar to Betty Crocker's Puffy Oven Pancake, or Lager's Dutch Baby. I don't think the oven was done preheating when I put it in, because it baked longer than the book directed, and rose far less impressively than I had hoped.

Another Granola Recipe (source)
Much drier than before. Probably too much. I'd like to try it again, but increase the amount of honey so oil and honey are 1:1, and mix it in more gradually, as I did with the previous batch. So far, I like the first version more. It may make bigger clumps as a cereal, but it also works very well as a snack for the office desk or before a run (and, I would think, on hikes). This one seems like it would be a better mix-in for yogurt. I'll find out this afternoon.

winging it
tomato-basil-parmesan bread
Several years ago (I still lived in Cleveland), Wankerbitch gave me some tomatoes he had withered in his dehydrator, suggesting I could "put them in bread or something." I never really got comfortable enough to try, which is why I still had them four or five years later. As part of my continuing effort to reduce the amount of stuff I have to move in my next relocation, I decided it was time to make some "bread or something." I started with my basic bread recipe, and added the tomatoes (helpful hint: even if your dried tomatoes are in a heavy Ziplock bag, don't use your hand to crush them into sizes suitable for use in bread. I did that, and managed to cut myself. With a tomato.), some dried basil, and parmesan. The parmesan made no discernible impact, but it was the big green jar of parmesan; a condiment, but not real cheese. the result was a large lovely loaf with a slightly sweet flavor and chewy morsels of tomato. Fantastic. I tried a couple other things while baking it (adding a little olive oil to the dough and baking much hotter than usual, for instance), and came to the conclusion that it might be time to revisit my Great Bread Experiment. I tried for over a year, carefully following instructions in my big bread book, to get the results I wanted, but I started getting much closer when I started ignoring the book and just tried stuff. I've baked two or three more loaves since then, and I'm making good progress. The secret may actually lie in how the bread gets stored after baking.

July Recipes

2011-08-03T15:07:00.004-07:00

Neapolitan Crust (source: Popular Plates Pizza)
I wasn't quite sure about the structural integrity of this dough as I flattened it, and I ended up folding parts of it over to try to thicken it. I won't say that it was a mistake, but I don't think it was necessary. The dough puffed a bit in the oven, and ended up far too thick for my pizza cutter (a novelty item made to look like a circular saw, which accompanied the cookbook in the original gift. Cute, but it allows for very little depth of cut. Not good design.). I did the only sensible thing. Eat all the evidence, and try again a couple days later. I don't remember the toppings specific to each trial, but anchovies, olives, fresh basil, and red bell pepper all played a role. The second time yielded better crust; I can only conclude that I need to keep making as much pizza as possible to perfect the art. For those who wondered, as I did: yes, I tried a little toss. No, I did not drop it. But it stretched the inside of the dough a LOT more than the outside, and I was afraid it would tear through the middle while remaining unreasonably thick at the edges, so I went back to patting and pressing.

Italian Chicken Soup (source: pasta book from B&N)
meh. Not bad, but not interesting. I made some substitutions, because I didn't have vermicelli and I wanted to get rid of some orzo, but nothing that would have a significant impact on flavor was changed. I should have, because it didn't have much flavor. I used lots of pepper and Tabasco sauce on the leftovers.

Winging it
Farfalle with a cream sauce, olives, capers (because I want them out of my fridge), corn (which I also wanted out of my fridge), and shrimp (because I wanted some protein involved). Pretty tasty, but not my best made-up pasta. Still, it's nice to know I can reliably make up something pretty good if necessary. I also made some libum that night and added some olives to that. Very good, but I'm not sure the olives made a difference.

oops
Anyone who can count has probably realized that there were only two New recipes posted above. I swear I didn't cheat... I just can't remember what the third recipe was. If I remember later, I'll add it, if only as a footnote for the sake of completeness.

In other culinary news, I've embarked on another project. Maybe two, but one of them with determined fervor. The other is bread bowls. I did things a little differently from last time this month when I made some bread bowls to go with the soup (while the rest of the country was locked in heat-ravaged death throes, Bend seemed to slip briefly into late October). They're ok, but I'm still not really satisfied with them. It reminds me a little of my year of baking bread, when I resolutely failed to get the results I wanted.

My more ambitious project is creating my own chocolate chip cookie recipe. I don't know enough about proper ratios yet to just swag it from scratch the way I can make up a pasta dish. I don't even know what baking soda and baking powder really do, how they're different, or why some recipes call for one or the other, and some recipes call for both. Instead of guessing, I'm going to make alterations to existing recipes until A) I achieve the results I want and B) it is sufficiently changed to call my own.

Somewhat related to formulating my own cookie, I saw a Wikihow today on how to bake a single chocolate chip cookie "for when you don't want a whole batch." I'm pretty sure that's the most asinine thing I've ever heard about baked goods.

June Recipes

2011-07-15T08:14:00.002-07:00

Chicago Deep Dish Pizza Crust (source: Popular Plates Pizza)
I'm not sure whether this is a book or a magazine, but the website seems to have the recipes and most of the "articles" posted. My brother and the succubus gave it to me for Christmas last year, and I've wanted to try some stuff ever since. California Roll and her husband (who added to their family August 1!) have a long tradition of making pizzas together, and even though I was never quite satisfied with the homemade pizzas we had when I was a kid, my tastes have changed a little, and I suspect I have a better resource on how to make them than Mom had.

I made this pizza in a 12" cast-iron skillet (it seemed a reasonable choice for a deep-dish pie, and I think the cast iron is a good substitute for a baking stone, providing a crisp outside surface on the crust, but holding heat well) using the sauce below, shredded mozzarella, ground sausage, fresh mushrooms, olives, and red bell peppers. I did not use the ridiculous Chicago technique of putting the toppings below the cheese and sauce. When I pulled the first slice out of the pan, some of the tomato and cheese oozed down and sizzled on the hot iron. It looked amazing, it sounded enticing, and I imagine it smelled pretty great, too. Flavor was perfect, and the crust was the right mix of crisp, hard, crunchy outside and chewy inside. All around win. It took considerable effort to put aside leftovers for the next night.

Chunky Fresh Tomato Sauce (source: same as above)
Gretel may disagree, but one hundred percent of poll respondents were on my side. Homemade pizza counts as multiple recipes if everything is made from scratch.To be fair, even I would only count the sauce and the crust. Adding toppings is just adding toppings, unless you do something really wild like topping with spare ribs or pad see ew. One batch of sauce got me through three pizzas. Very good, simple to make, but you have to start the day before you plan to actually use it. I spent the next twenty-six hours fantasizing about homemade pizza. It was a rough day.

Toffee Bars (source: my good friend Betty Crocker)
I wanted to try some bar cookies this summer. These were a good start. The toffee part gets mixed and pressed into a 9x13, and when they're almost set, you take them back out of the oven and sprinkle the top with chocolate chips. When they start to melt, spread them with a spatula, and toss on some chopped nuts. Easy, tasty, look impressive. What more could you ask?

Winging it
I spent more than half of June in other states (no, not drunk... not necessarily), so I didn't get to experiment as much as usual--at least, not to the usual extent. Instead, I offer two minor experiments. Towards the end of May, I made cinnamon rolls, mainly to see whether I could, and partly to determine whether I'd be able to make Bacon Cinnamon Rolls for the climbing trip. Granted, I got the idea from someone else's website, but where they used Pillsbury Cinnamon Roll Product, mine were scratch. This allowed me to make a couple improvements. First, I crumbled some well-cooked bacon into the dough. Second, I arranged my bacon perpendicular to the cuts I made later to separate the rolls, so a bite doesn't end up stripping the bacon out of the rest of your breakfast. Third, I added pecans, though IPA requested I omit them from a few. Finally (a minor point), I made the icing, which was new to me, because when I made the rolls at my place, I ran out of milk before that part. I haven't made them since, but I think of them often, and with great longing.

The other minor experiment was on the same trip, but I had the idea a month or two ahead of time. There were rumors that IPA and Lager wanted to fish at the lake where we stayed, so I jotted down a couple simple recipes for fried fish. However, both called for cornmeal, and I didn't want to bother buying a sack of cornmeal for what might turn out to be a three-ounce bluegill. Instead, I specifically added tortilla chips to the grocery list, and when Lager caught a monster bass that had been haunting the end of our meager dock, we crushed the chips to make the dredge. We must have ground them to the perfect consistency, because they held well to the fish, and added a nice crunch.

at least it's Friday

2011-07-08T11:15:00.004-07:00

This morning I awoke to discover that sometime yesterday or last night, the brackets holding two large shelves in one of my kitchen cabinets collapsed, dropping everything on those shelves (and the shelves themselves) to be supported by whatever was beneath them. When I tried to clear that mess out this morning, I found that due to the poorly-planned geometry of my kitchen, the shelves can not be removed without first taking the door off the cabinet.

When I got to work, I had several emails waiting for me (impressive if only because I left at 5 last night, and arrived at 7 this morning), my favorite of which boiled down to "you're an idiot and you are terrible at your job," and was CCed to nine other people; I report directly to two of them, and a third is their boss, and a fourth is the Chief Operating Officer. A meeting has been set for this afternoon to discuss further.

In an effort to produce something--anything--today, I went to a vendor to pick up some sheet metal parts so I could finish building a project. Every part was wrong. My drawings were ok, but the parts did not match them.

All of that was before 9 AM.

It's going to be a beer night.

Gretel

2011-07-07T07:20:00.001-07:00

exploitation

2011-06-29T18:38:00.002-07:00

Gretel says that I'm not "using" the company if I interview with them while maintaining no intention whatsoever of taking the job. I knew from the start I wouldn't take the job, because it's still too far from her. I have friends who say things like "it's closer than Oregon! That's a good start!" but I don't need a good start. At a rate of a new job every two to four years, I'd be retired by the time we actually managed to live together, and with a new job every two to four years, I'd have a lousy retirement package. Hell, I don't even get a third week of vacation here until four years. I can't afford to waste time getting "closer." I need to get there. So when an HR person called me about a great job in North Carolina doing something I had never considered, but which still sounded interesting (and offered discounts on a lot of stuff I use), I knew I'd never take the job, but I kept them on the line. Today was my second phone interview. Second! That's two more interviews (and infinitely more interest from a prospective employer) than I've had with anyone else since... well, since I took this job.

At the end, during the ubiquitous "do you have any questions for me?" phase, I asked about the possibility of teleworking with frequent visits. He said that wasn't likely, because they really needed someone on site--otherwise I could just stay in Oregon. I agree. Engineering should be on the same site as manufacturing. Every company I've worked for which outsourced manufacturing to Asia spends close to half its time correcting--or trying to correct--manufacturing flaws. Plus, it's better for engineers to work closely with the people building the product to address any difficulties in manufacture or assembly. Everyone wins. He asked me if it was a deal breaker. Even though I knew the answer two weeks ago when I first heard from his HR guy, I said I'd have to think about it and get back to him. After having someone get excited about my resume (or even READING my resume), and tell me during the second phone interview that they wanted me to speak to some people in person, I think it's a little hard to let go of that. It's the first company since my current employer to show genuine interest in me. I don't know how long it will be until that happens again. Or if it will happen again.

I'll tell them tomorrow.

More May Recipes

2011-05-31T08:43:00.004-07:00

I did a couple extra because I wanted to be sure that I could make them before adding them to the menu for our trip.

Sausage Gravy (for biscuits)
source: Dad. He makes really good sausage gravy. This is the second recipe he's tried, but I don't know where he got it.
the recipe is dead simple, but I think I would have done better if I'd used a whisk to Stir Constantly instead of a spoon; I had little lumps of flour-milk mix in my gravy. It still turned out a lot better than the last time I tried it (different recipe), but it's a pretty small batch. Maybe some day I'll own a whisk.

Cinnamon Rolls
I wish I had Mom's recipe, but I got this from Betty Crocker. I also used the last of my milk for the dough, so I wasn't able to make the icing drizzle. (yes, I could have bought more, but I wouldn't get through it before I leave for nine days) My other oversight was assuming I had raisins, because I forgot I used up the last of them on oatmeal raisin cookies a couple months ago. Combined, those two slips meant I had relatively uninteresting cinnamon rolls... but I sill had cinnamon rolls, and I figured out how to make them the night before so I don't have to wake up three hours before I want cinnamon rolls. However, I still think I could get away with more brown sugar and cinnamon in the filling. Maybe something else can be added to the filling.

Bonus round
This isn't really a recipe, but I'm already two up for the month, so I'll mention it anyway because it was super easy and very good. It's more a cooking method. When BC came to visit, we talked about food and how I enjoy cooking, but I want to know what actually happens to the food (chemically and physically) to magically transform it from Ingredients to Delicious Things I Get To Eat. He bought me Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here For The Food," and the first section is about searing. He has a recipe for strip steak, but I didn't have strip steak; I had elk chops.

Put barely enough oil in a cast iron skillet to dampen the bottom. Barely. You'll have to tip the pan around while heating to get coverage. With your other hand, rub some kosher salt and black pepper on both sides of elk chops/ steak/ whatever. Rub it in good, and use plenty of each. Dangle the chops (mine were boneless, which made it easier to get good contact) over the hot skillet, and carefully lay them flat. Do not move them. Do not touch them at all for two or three minutes (except maybe to push down on the tops to get more contact across the bottom). Go wash your hands, or sing Song Two. Flip the chops, and give them a little longer on the second side (the skillet lost some heat to the first side). Nicely browned outside, lovely color inside, delicious all around.

dropping in

2011-05-20T10:35:00.002-07:00

Last weekend, Gretel ran the Cleveland Marathon. I told her that I regretted that I wouldn't be able to watch, and she agreed that it was a silly idea for me to fly out just to see her cross the finish line, especially when I have two other trips in the next month. I didn't tell her that I bought a plane ticket a month ago.

I've decided to take credit for the morale boost that gave her the extra few seconds she needed to get the time she wanted. The other impact my arrival made on their weekend? When her mom realized I'd be there for meals, she immediately doubled the amount of food on the menu. My reputation precedes me.

WankerBitch picked me up at the airport, took me to Gretel's parents' place, and found it empty. When she told me that she had no plans for Saturday, I thought she meant that she had no plans for Saturday, when in fact she ran several errands, went to a tennis match, and out for breakfast. I wasted most of WankerBitch's day driving me around while we waited for them to get back.

That night (after my second arrival) I borrowed her car to see my uncle's new place, and was immediately hired to install my cousin's closet doors. After her race the next day, Gretel told me that my actions greatly reduced her recovery time.

It's amazing what I can accomplish in one weekend with only six or seven hours of sleep in three days.

And it's ok that I take this opportunity to crow about my own meager accomplishments, because although Gretel did run an amazing race, the combination of her mom, brother, and Facebook heaped such a ridiculous amount of commendation upon her that she forbade me from giving her any more praise at all. Apparently, even her towering ego can be inflated too far. But she earns it.

May Recipes

2011-05-19T08:46:00.000-07:00

Crispy Rice Chocolate Chip Cookies from the usual CCC source.
These are not the biggest failure I had while working from this book. That was a year or two ago, when I tried a sour cream CCC recipe. During that batch, some of the butter and sour cream did not get blended well, and the dough lumps liquefied in the oven, oozing into a paper-thin layer of sugar-hardened crust on the baking sheet. Removing individual cookies was impossible; I couldn't even find edges between the little bastards. I had to settle for chiseling the mess into a heap, and the next day I bought some ice cream, since I had no cookies, only a crumbly pile that I hoped would be a decent ice cream topping. Every bowl of ice cream tasted like sadness and defeat. This recipe intrigued me because, like a Vorta, I am sometimes interested in the textures of food more than the flavors. I bring the dregs of cereal boxes to work to dump in my yogurt, because I like it when yogurt crunches. Why not add some crunchy cereal to chocolate chip cookies?

Because there's too much damn butter in the recipe, and the cookies don't hold a shape. They flatten out, oozing into puddles as they bake. You have to remove them from the oven before they burn, but they are still too soft and thin to remove from the baking sheet in any form remotely resembling a cookie. I managed to salvage about half the batch in a form that still looked like cookies, but if you don't let them cool for a couple hours, they tend to drip back out of your hand when you try to eat them. When they have cooled, they are thin enough that light passes through them. Very disappointing.

Spicy Bacon Rigatoni from the pasta book I got off the discount table at Barnes and Noble.
I only made one mistake with this recipe: I bought cheap bacon. It was mainly fat, with little flavor or real meat. I deeply regret that decision (not least of all because I have to eat the rest of the package of bad bacon), because I think I could smell the sauce as it cooked, and what I thought I smelled was amazing. Most people don't know this, and most who do forget, but I have very little sense of smell, and its selectivity is aggravating. If someone lights a cigarette within a hundred yards of me--even downwind--I know instantly, but I can't smell a baking apple pie. Car exhaust, yes. Flowers, no. Cleaners, chemicals, and noxious soaps: clear as a bell. Fresh Bread: nothing. I can't even walk past a Bath and Body Works at a mall without choking, but I am immune to the odorgasms everyone else has upon entering a bakery. Still, I think I smelled my pasta sauce (maybe because I liberally overestimated the amount of red pepper flakes I dumped in there, but I regret nothing), and it made me very happy. I'll have to try this again soon with proper bacon.

Soft Molasses Cookies (from Betty Crocker)
The Great Scot runs a hiking group in town. Sometimes, I get invited on hikes that are not part of the group's official agenda. I've come to the conclusion that I only get invited because they know I'll bring cookies. I'm ok with that. The Great Scot's wife is allergic to chocolate, so I need to come up with alternatives for those forays, and these looked good. I think the first sheet or two were a little under-baked, but the rest turned out better. Softer than I expected, but still very good.

Winging it
On Mother's Day (when we had hail here in Bend), I decided to honor the culinary experimentation of my own mom by making up something good for me. And by getting rid of leftovers in my fridge. I already had a little diced onion, some frozen broccoli, and some feta (I made libum again to go with the Spicy Bacon Rigatoni); to those I added a small can of sliced black olives, 10 oz of canned albacore tuna, fresh crimini mushrooms, and heavy whipping cream. I cooked all of that together while the pasta boiled, and tossed the sauce with the drained noodles. I wish I had put in more of the feta (I only used about 1/2 a cup, but I had 3/4 to a full cup on hand), because I couldn't really pick up the flavor of the cheese, but it was still very good. Gretel believes that my hyposmia means I don't taste as well, either, leading to a love of spicy foods. I maintain that I love spicy foods because they are awesome, though I admit that I like stronger, bolder flavors. It's the main reason that while I like sushi, I've never found it as enthralling as many people. But I'm working on becoming more familiar with it anyway.

A Poll
Swamp Gas gave me a book purporting to list the best places to get pizza in the US, along with a few recipes. I'd like to try making some pizza from scratch, but there is a question as to how it counts for this project. If a pizza is made from scratch, crust and all, how many recipes is that? I maintain that it is at least two (and since sauce is usually very simple, it seems unlikely that one pizza would be more than two recipes), but Gretel contends One Dish, One Recipe. Being a bread nerd, I have great respect for the crust, as it can make or break the pie. As a kid, I'd seek out the slices that had the thicker handles, because it gave me more crust to eat. To draw a parallel, if you made homemade pasta, then used that pasta in a pasta recipe, that's clearly two recipes. I believe Gretel only makes this argument because she wants my culinary expertise to be as broad as possible before cohabitation, and thinks that by calling "foul" on plural recipes, she will force me to learn an additional dish next month.

Is fully homemade pizza one recipe, or more than one?

blown away

2011-05-06T14:33:00.002-07:00

Last week, while riding my bike back from an afternoon of Big Damn Kite flying, I had a curious thought. I got the kite almost exactly a year ago (I'm going to the same event tomorrow), and on the same day, a boy of about 12 bought the twin to my kite in an auction.

About eight months ago, the kite threw me for the first time. The wind was strong enough that I had to lean back a little, but not much, and not constantly (There have been days when I leaned back so far that an observer remarked their doubt that ankles were supposed to do that). Then a sudden gust hit the kite. You've probably seen home movies or ridiculous slapstick in which someone holds a line connected to a boat or car, and stands patiently on water skis or a skateboard, having clearly put zero thought into the physics involved, and when the engine is gunned, they suddenly fly through the air--briefly--like Superman, arms outstretched, until gravity reasserts itself and they come crashing down on their chest, and obstinately neglect to let go of the line. I suspect that's how I looked when the gust caught me. I remember being airborne, I remember bouncing on my chest when I hit the ground, and I remember rolling out of the bounce. When I stopped moving, my feet were towards the kite, which had crashed ahead of me, and I had somehow managed to not get wrapped in the lines.

Then I learned to prepare for those gusts, or the strong pulls from the kite when it comes through big turns. A couple months later, when my brother got to fly the kite for the first time, I warned him that if he felt a sudden strong pull, he should "jump high and land running." He thought I was kidding. When the kite stopped dragging him, he stood up and discovered grass inside his underwear. I can usually work the kite well enough to manage long hops when it pulls hard, landing 20 or 30 feet away. The kite has pulled my dad off his feet and dragged him, and he weighs over 200 pounds.

What did the other kite do to that kid?

Aired out

2011-05-06T08:21:00.002-07:00

Last night it was finally warm enough (well, it was not too cold) to sleep with my window open. I've waited for that night for weeks. I don't know whether it was the steady supply of fresh air, or the cool breeze over my face, or night sounds like rustling trees and chirping frogs (I have no idea why they're singing already, but I swear I heard them), but I think it was the deepest sleep I've had in months. Maybe I'll start sleeping on the porch.

Osama

2011-05-04T18:03:00.003-07:00

When it went down, I might have actually been in an airport, just past security, eating a sloppy and overpriced sandwich. The Phillies-Mets game was on TV, and I read later that people started chanting in the stands when they got the news on their Phones More Intelligent Than Mine.

I didn't find out until I woke up in a hotel the next morning and turned on the news to see if anything interesting had happened that I could use to fill Friendly Conversation with the co-workers I don't usually see, and thus do not know well enough to talk about their real lives. I was so fascinated that I actually rushed to the lobby for breakfast, because I knew there was a large stack of free newspapers, and I could get more information from them than I ever would from local morning news.

Admittedly, my first gut reaction was that security for my flight back on Tuesday--and the many other flights on which I will embark in the next couple months--would be murder, and there was great apprehension over whether the US had just created a martyr for the terrorist community (and a general sense of WTF over why they had buried his body at sea). Those feelings mellowed pretty quickly. Global response, from the tiny bit of news I could observe without access to the Intertubes, seemed fairly positive. Nobody else has died or even been threatened. American Muslims celebrated. Most of the questions I still have are unanswered, but they're the type of questions that will likely never be answered in public, and I'm ok with that.

I'm proud of our armed forces, and of the SEAL team who carried out the mission. Their only casualty was a Sea Hawk helicopter, and the only non-combatant killed during the raid was a woman who was used as a human shield by one of the armed men inside the compound. A truly courageous man if ever there was one. When I learned that the burial at sea was to adhere to Muslim law which requires funeral within 24 hours of death, I felt even better. Risking all the nutters who claim that the man is still alive just because the body hasn't been put on public display, the Navy treated the body with the respect and dignity none of the man's victims were ever afforded (and simultaneously showed respect to the entire Muslim community, regardless of the extremeness or tameness of their views). The entire mission seems to have been carried out in the best possible manner.

I never suspected that my pride wouldn't last, but this afternoon I had to focus it a little more clearly on those who actually planned, supported, and executed the mission. In this subset of humanity I exclude all the bonehead politicians who have spent the days since deciding which president to praise for the effort. All the intel relevant to the mission was gathered in the past year, but I heard a clip from a speech today praising W's plan made ten years ago to find Osama. This was about the same time he landed on an aircraft carrier under a Mission Accomplished banner. But I digress, and that was not my plan, because that would miss the point as grievously as those about whom I complain.

It's not about whether Republicans or Democrats played a greater role. It's not about whether W's plan or Obama's order sealed the fate of Al Qaeda's mastermind. It's not even about how this might affect who is chosen to lead the country next.

May 1, 2011 was a great day for the entire world. Terrorism is everywhere. Not just in red states, or blues states, or New York City or Washington, D.C., or even just in the United States. Terrorism is everywhere. Al Qaeda is everywhere. Their victims have been from dozens of countries, and nearly every religion. Elderly people were in those planes, able-bodied men and women were on board the USS Cole, and just last week a suicide vest was strapped to a 12 year old boy. That's the thing about terrorists: they don't actually target anyone. They aim only to cause panic, fear, and discord. We can't allow that. The raid in Abbottabad was not a victory for any political party. It was a victory for the human race. It's not about politics; it's about showing that the world will not be a victim to those who prey upon innocent lives to drive countries apart and sow hatred between nations.

I'm ashamed that so many of the people in power in our nation can't understand that.

April Recipes

2011-04-14T12:14:00.002-07:00

Dad's (/Mom's) Waffles
Well aware of my great love for perforated pancakes, Dad usually makes them at least once when I come home to visit. I like his better than the recipe I have (I think it's the same recipe Mom used), so I asked him for it. I was right. They're fantastic.

Dad's (/Mom's) spinach lasagna
Also fantastic. I didn't bother to add any meat to this (my bacon cheeseburger lasagna from a month or two ago was disappointing), and it's still great. Plus, you don't need to pre-cook the noodles, which makes it easy, too! The recipe still seemed a little thin to me (plus, I needed to get rid of some onion), so I added fresh mushrooms, a small can of olives, some onion, and a couple garlic cloves (which I also wanted out of my fridge).

Snickerdoodles
It took me about an hour and a half to make a batch and do all the dishes. The next day, they were summit cookies for Sutton Mountain, north of Mitchell. I really liked them as a kid, and haven't had them in years.

Winging it:
A twofer this month! On the same day (I stopped skiing early because the weather and snow conditions were both horrible) I made bread bowls and cream of philly cheese steak soup to fill them. The bread bowls were from a pretty basic bread recipe; I meant to add a little more yeast to see if I could increase the volume a little, but I forgot. However, brushing them with olive oil immediately before and after baking gave them a really nice color and crust texture. I think next time I'd like to add a little olive oil to the dough as well. Before I ate any of them, but after I removed the core, I stuck them in the oven under the broiler for a few minutes to toast a little, then I lined them with provolone before adding the soup. Very good, but I do need to figure out how to make them a little bigger, because one normal bowl of soup filled the bread bowls two or three times.

Many years ago, Dad and I discovered a recipe for Cream of Reuben Soup. It remains one of our all-time favorites from the long period of culinary experimentation he and I had when we were both essentially unemployed (he was self-employed, and I worked for him, but we were both looking for other options). In late March, confronted with mushrooms I had forgotten to put in something else (ran out of room in the pan), I realized I could probably re-tool the recipe for Philly Cheese Steaks. I was right. I was so right. I'd like to find a better way to season the steak, but otherwise I think it turned out very, very well. Now I need to teach Dad what a Philly is, because when I called him to brag, he asked about ground beef. No, Dad.

Jobtions

2011-03-31T21:14:00.002-07:00

Sometimes, after hours of luckless poring over job boards, I start to daydream about alternative employment options. This usually gives me a mix of wistfulness and spirit-crushing.

I've wanted to be an engineer for a long time--long before I even applied to college. I grew up solving puzzles of all kinds, and Dad started teaching me multiplication and division when I was still in kindergarten. It was kind of a lock, because I figured engineers were professional problem-solvers, and besides--they got to work with robots!! Since then, I have neither solved interesting problems, nor worked with a single robot. My most enjoyable days at work are usually when I'm in the back area, far from my desk, using a crowbar, hammer, and power tools to make large wooden crates succumb to my will. This seems to be my strong suit, because a co-workers wife recently revealed that she did not know that I was a mechanical engineer; she naturally assumed from all the box-smashing, errand-running, and shipping/receiving I did that I was the (her exact words) "office gopher." She's not far from the truth.

Fact is, despite a strong desire to be an engineer since I first found out they're the ones making cool robots, I have yet to have a single job as an engineer. The titles lie. When I was an "engineer" at the lighting place, I built prototypes and crates (fun!) and served as Note-Taking Bitch for several meetings in which I was otherwise not involved at all (sucky!). As an "applications engineer" I did a little tech support (poorly managed and hellish!), taught the software (still pretty fun!), and did lots of demos in my main capacity as Sales Tool (I felt dirty!). Now, though I hold the title "mechanical engineer" for the first time since declaring it as a major, I'm just a software monkey (and gopher, another misunderstood mammal). After months of wondering exactly why they hired me--and were so excited to--despite the total lack of interest shown by any other interviewers since graduation, I discovered just before the holidays that I was hired not for my stunning (HA!) resume, my training as an engineer, nor even the master's degree which ostensibly gave me management potential and opportunity for career advancement, but because I'm a wunderkind with the software I taught at my last job. By now, my degrees are probably completely pointless. I've never used either of them, and my boss as much as guaranteed that a promotion of any sort was not in my foreseeable future.

Another great reason to think about another line of work.

Gretel thinks I would be a great paramedic. During one period after college, when Dad was the only person who would hire me, I found out about an 8-week course that taught participants to be Wilderness EMTs. It sounded fantastic. I could help people, and do it while hanging off a cliff. I'd be perfect for that! Mom wanted me to be a doctor (Gretel scoffs, reminding me that all mothers want their children to be doctors), but I was always worried that a patient would die under my care, and I'd feel responsible. Not a problem as an EMT; the odds are against those patients anyway!

My least-secret desire is to somehow make a living as an author. I've almost finished one book, and I'm well into another, with ideas for several more including a possible series. But something about not knowing I have another paycheck on the way terrifies me. If I were the most successful author since Stephen King and my name on the spine was the guaranteed mark of another bestseller, I know that I'd continue to live like a pauper, just in case I needed to make the money last indefinitely.

Tonight I applied to a job at the REI Outdoor School. I have zero professional experience in that arena, but Lager and his lady think I should go on American Ninja Warrior, everyone else wants me to be their partner on The Amazing Race, there are those who believe I can start a fire underwater, and I've taught everything from knots and first aid to 3D modeling and calculus. The question is, does life experience actually count for anything? Because it's about all I have in the bank.

I asked Dad how he would feel if I weren't an engineer anymore. I know he's more disappointed than I am that Swamp Gas is slinging boxes instead of landscraping, his true love. He said as long as I'm happy, it doesn't matter what I do... and I believed him. Gretel has reminded me a couple times that she'd support whatever career decision I'd make, so long as I'm happy with it. Maybe it's time for another path. I still want to solve problems, and I don't want to turn my back on engineering, but... sometimes it feels as though it's turned its back on me.

The Giving Tin

2011-03-29T11:08:00.002-07:00

This past winter, in a fit of neighborliness coupled with an inability to sleep until my alarm broke the morning's snow-muffled silence, I gave up on staying in bed until the brutish klaxon screamed. If I woke at 3 am or sometime similarly ridiculous, I'd stay in bed, hoping to glean more sleep from the hours I had left until dawn, but if I found myself awake after 5, I'd just get up. I already get to the office long before anyone else, mainly because when I run out of tasks in my apartment, I go to work, and it never takes me long to eat breakfast, brush my teeth, and pack my modest lunch. For lack of something better to do, I'd sweep the steps leading up to the apartments of my neighbor and I. She works at the high school and is, at most, a decade older than I am. Once, on a weekend (before I owned skis and used all available weekend time on the mountain), I delayed this chore to make gingerbread cookies (my first attempt at this ancient art. I learned that I need a better roller, and that my spider-shaped cookie cutter does not like to release the dough), and realized that I had blown it when I heard her sweeping the stairs. So I took her some fresh cookies. Thus it began.

A couple days later she gave me a few Christmas cookies and a tin of homemade caramel corn. During my attempts to improve an existing cookie recipe, I returned the tin (featuring an image of Santa and the repeated slogan "Just Believe") to her, full of my test results. I left it outside her front door one morning on my way to the mountain. Within a month it reappeared at my own door with something she described as homemade Oreos.

The tin, back in her possession, has fallen out of use, but the game continues. On no particular schedule, and for no particular reason, we provide each other with small samples of baked goods. Bagels, baguettes (it was still hot from the oven when she handed it to me--I almost cried), tiny cakes, and cookies. We've learned that we are both aspiring authors, and enjoy photography, though she is far better equipped for the hobby than I am. We've also learned that we live next to pretty skilled bakers.

But neither of us have swept the stairs in months.

March recipes

2011-03-29T08:29:00.004-07:00

Potato Pancakes (source: Lodge)
When I was much younger, I remember Mom made potato pancakes for dinner. The first time it happened, I had two reactions simultaneously. 1) Awesome! Pancakes for supper!! 2) Why would anyone ruin pancakes by making them out of potatoes? I hadn't yet reached a point where I found sour cream palatable, either--it was just another gross thing grown-ups did to their food, like "ketchup" or "pepper." (I still don't care for ketchup, but I'll use it in recipes) Luckily, Mom also had applesauce for topping. That's probably what sold me.

I'd never made them myself before this month, and I was a little frustrated at the recipe's use of measurements like "four potatoes," because it's like saying something is "the size of a dog," a range which covers everything from large rats to small ponies. Despite such vagueness, I made some pretty excellent potato pancakes. I just wish I'd had some applesauce. (I only made the pancakes to get rid of some sour cream I had leftover from another dinner)

Cumberland crab cakes (also Lodge)
Lesson learned. Don't use fake crab meat. I didn't want to use fake crab, but I couldn't get crab meat at my grocery without getting the shell, too, and I was too hungry to check other sources or chew my way into the shells. The stuff I bought--large chunks--was better suited to salads or pasta dishes than crab cakes. It didn't mix well no matter how much I mashed it with my fingers, and it couldn't form cakes. I salvaged it by making Crab Cake: packing the whole mess into a cast iron skillet coated with melted butter and baking it until the top started to brown a little and it was heated through. Then I made it into fancy-pants big-ass crostini by using it top toasted bagels with lemon juice and a the feta leftover from last month's libum. It wasn't crab cakes, but it was very tasty.

Libum take two (source)
I didn't bother to buy whole wheat flour just for this recipe (I want to pack as little as possible when the time comes for me to relocate), and I used basil instead of bay leaves because I can't find fresh bay leaves, but it was still awesome. The cheddar gave a very different flavor from the feta, and the result was cheesy, chewy, delicious biscuit-things. I used dried bay leaves last time and removed them before eating the bread (they are edible, but dried bay leaves are very stiff, and it's advisable to remove them from the food they flavor before serving), but I've used basil in other breads, and baking the libum on the leaves removes the need for the parchment paper I usually employ. Besides, bay leaves are used more for their aroma than their flavor, and with my very limited sense of smell, the effect is lost on me.

Winging it
It's pretty easy to make up pasta recipes, but I have a non-pasta idea for next month to break the pattern. This month was a cream sauce (I was going to use sour cream, but chickened out and used whipping cream instead) with turkey sausage, broccoli, red bell pepper, onion, fresh basil, and some parmesan. I should do this professionally.

February recipes

2011-03-07T08:53:00.002-08:00

Libum
source
Super easy, fun to make (all stirring is done by mashing it with your hands--easily the most effective and entertaining way to mix any food), and tasty. Bread, with cheese, and the option to top it with honey. Once I find a good way to add bacon, it could become the perfect food. This article was the first I'd heard of it, but once I started looking, I found lots of different recipes for libum (an ancient Roman bread in which the main ingredient by weight AND volume is cheese). This one forms two small rounds which are conveniently the perfect size to re-heat in the toaster.

Elk Hash
Source: Sacagawea Cookbook
After I bought this for Gretel, only partly because a sticker on the cover proclaimed that it was SIGNED BY AUTHOR, I was disappointed to find out that Sacagawea didn't actually write it. In fact, I'm not sure ANY of the recipes were from the famous guide's repertoire, because Liquid Smoke wasn't available in her time. But there's lots of interesting history and excerpts from the journals of Lewis and Clark's men, and recipes for things like buffalo. Mmmm, buffalo. This recipe was supposed to be for buffalo, but elk was an option, and I had elk in my freezer, not buffalo. It's a good one-pot meal, but I wish I had seasoned the meat a little more creatively. The sunflower seeds were a nice touch.

Elk Marinade
Source: see above.
I defrosted a LOT more elk than we needed to make the hash, so I had Gretel send me a marinade recipe and fired up my grill. Very tasty. Plus, I had a beer while grilling, because if you don't, you're not doing it right. And grilled elk chops with a hot slab of honeyed libum? Maybe the best meal I made that month.

Winging it
Bacon cheeseburger lasagna
I need to experiment a little with adding bacon to ... pretty much everything. Someone put me in charge of menu planning for the climbing trip this year, and the only requirement seems to be More Bacon. However, I ate my weight in bacon on that trip last year, and didn't feel right for several days afterward, so instead of just going the Louis L'Amour route and comprising every meal solely of bacon and coffee, I feel the bacon should be artfully introduced. Maybe with some vegetables slipped in under the radar. Voila, lasagna! Except I wasn't impressed. I blame the ground angus I used (mainly to get it out of my freezer) instead of ground sausage. Rule one of pasta: never use ground beef when ground sausage is available. I don't care what animal provided the sausage--it's perfectly seasoned, often has less fat, and gives much better flavor. Ground beef is for hamburgers. I also take some blame myself. It needed... more bacon. Or at least, I needed to cook the bacon before using it to top the lasagna. It cooked enough to not kill me, but the flavor was lost. March may see Round Two of this experiment, and maybe another version of libum. One of the recipes I found compared libum to lembas, and now I can't get that idea out of my head.

Womb of Darkness

2011-02-23T15:49:00.000-08:00

"Please tell me Gretel is pregnant." Usually I'm the one who starts phone calls as though the conversation has been under way for several minutes, skipping past the formalities of "hello, how are you?" and "can you believe this weather?" but this time Dad did it to me.

"OK. 'Gretel is pregnant.'"

"You don't sound very convincing."

"I'm not."

Dad explained that Swamp Gas had called to tell him he would be a grandfather, and he was clinging to hope that I was the source. No such luck, Pops. My brother called me a day after he had called Dad. As luck would have it, Gretel was visiting, and successfully convinced me not to call the Vatican, John Constantine, or Damien Karras.

Dad and I are convinced that The Event serves as another excuse for the succubus to stay at home and never get a job, and to forge another tie to keep my impressionable, malleable brother under its dark control. Gretel is convinced that I am now offered an opportunity to gain some measure of revenge by being "the cool uncle" who goes about doing fantastic things like mountain climbing, whitewater explorations, and gainful employment, dropping in to win over the chylde with charms and interesting gifts. There's no reason we can't all be right.

January recipes

2011-02-07T11:15:00.004-08:00

This year, I resolve to be better about posting the recipes I try, if only to help me keep track (In January, I accidentally made a recipe I thought was new again, only to realize that not only had I already made it, but that I didn't like it the first time, either. It was bland beef stew, and for some reason the beef was rather tough. I used lots of pepper and hot sauce on all the leftovers.)

Catfish recipe whose name I can't recall (source: A Skillet Full (cheaper than Amazon!)). Very tasty, but I've tried a couple fried fish recipes, and I always have trouble with breading coming off. This worked better than the last recipe I tried, but it's still a problem for me. It might be that I use a buttermilk substitute (add 1 T lemon juice to 1 C milk, let sit for 20 minutes, stir) instead of real buttermilk (as I always do. I don't go through it fast enough to buy it in any real quantity, and it's always given me good results in my banana bread), but I doubt it. I think I just need to blot the fish dryer before trying to do anything else to it. Maybe someday I'll get to try with real fish, instead of individually shrink-wrapped fillets from the grocery freezer, but catfish are hard to come by in Oregon.

White Chili (source: Fix It and Forget It) Mom had a great white chili recipe. I'm still trying to find it. This isn't it. There were a couple recipes for white chili (uses chicken instead of beef, and navy/white beans instead of red/kidney beans) in the book, and I chose the one that had less ridiculous steps, though I don't remember now what made this one less ridiculous. I do remember that there were a couple things I wanted to add (I had garlic cloves and pepperoncini in the fridge; either would have offered improvement) that completely slipped my mind while I was making it. I should have seasoned the chicken better, too. This is another dish I had to improve with hot sauce (and shredded cheddar) while consuming leftovers, but I take some of that blame myself. Luckily, I also made some stellar cornbread that night (from A Skillet Full; see: Corn light bread), and it was still crisp from the oven when I had dinner. I had three pieces. I regret none of them.

The Orchard's Chocolate Chip Cookies (source: 101 Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies) I may have mentioned it before, but this book was compiled from entries in a chocolate chip cookie contest. This was the winner, and for some reason, I never tried it before. It was submitted by a B&B or inn somewhere (probably in an orchard), which explains one major facet of the recipe: it makes nine and a half dozen cookies. Don't get me wrong--I'm a huge fan of the big batch of cookies, because, well, more cookies!!, but I took a big box of these into work (decimated), gave some more to a neighbor, and still had plenty for myself for the next two weeks. Considering how I go through cookies, that's a lot of damn cookies. I also wasn't happy with the consistency of the dough: it seemed too wet, and the cookies spread a little thin during baking. With typical arrogance, I took it upon myself to improve this award-winning recipe. The original calls for 5 eggs (and 2.5 cups of butter, to give you an idea of scale), so it's not easy to reduce the batch size for experimentation. Unless, like me, the first trial you wanted to run called for one less egg. Once I had finished the last of the originals, I made a half batch (with two eggs) and was rewarded with 4.5 dozen chewy double-chocolate cookies. Naturally, the sharing was not as generous (the Bitter Muffin Bakery is not real big on "sharing" small amounts of cookies), but I was pleased with my efforts.

In conjunction with renewed efforts to track my recipe experiment more closely, I also decided that I finally had the chops to add a new aspect to my culinary ventures: making stuff up. Three new recipes a month still stands, but now I'm adding one Winging It a month. Existing recipes can be used as a foundation or inspiration, but significant departures must be made. Winging It is an effort to start making up my own recipes. So far, I think I'm doing pretty well.

Creamy Chorizo Pasta
I made paella this month, mainly to get rid of some chicken and peas left in my freezer. There wasn't enough chicken, so I bought some cocktail shrimp (already cooked, so I don't have to think too much) to liven things up a little. I also finally found beef chorizo sausage at the grocery, and decided to use that instead of the Hillshire farms smoked sausage I usually employ in the Easiest Paella In The World.

Best. Paella. Ever.

The chorizo casing looked like plastic, and I wasn't sure it was edible, so I peeled it off before chopping the sausage into the rice mixture. The sausage... melted. Eating it later, I couldn't find a piece of sausage anywhere, but everything tasted like chorizo. It was amazing. I added the shrimp for the last 5 minutes of baking with the peas, and even the shrimp picked up a lot of chorizo flavor. I'm never making it the old way again.

Anyway, I still had a lot of peas and a little chorizo left over, so I decided to get creative and expand the parameters of my recipe experiment.

1 C whipping cream
4 oz chorizo
1 C peas
8 oz fresh sliced mushrooms
1 lb pasta. I used Farfalle, but I usually just grab the shape I like best that night from my pantry.
I might have also minced a clove or two of garlic; I don't remember.

while pasta water boils, cook the chorizo in a skillet with mushrooms (and maybe garlic?). Eat a couple mushroom slices. Soaked and cooked in chorizo, they're pretty intense. Add the cream, and keep stirring it while the pasta boils, letting it thicken a little. Add the peas for the last minute or two of cooking, and toss with the drained pasta. I'm not sure it's proper to put red meat in a white (cream-based) sauce, but the sauce was a little orange by the time it was done. Tossing with pasta thinned the color a little, but the taste was great.

A couple nights later (because I STILL had peas, and now a cup of cream) I tried another variant: smoked salmon (the package said "salmon jerky," but it's still smoked salmon), peas, cream, and ~1/4 C parmesan for the sauce. I was out of mushrooms, but they would have been good, too. I think this should have been used with a smaller amount of pasta, but both the chorizo and the salmon have nice, strong, flavors, so they still taste great, but the pasta (shells that time, because it was fish, and I think it's funny) tended to stick a little in the leftovers without more sauce to coat it.

shakes

2011-01-21T16:38:00.002-08:00

Yesterday we made liquid nitrogen ice cream. The best of the three flavors was double chocolate with toffee chips and marshmallows. Today, because we still had LN2 left, we made three more batches. The last was coffee, with chocolate chips and toffee chips. I shouldn't have let Shruk handle the coffee flavoring. He made it REALLY strong.

I think I can see through time.

About an hour after I finished my (large) bowl, I felt it kick in. Suddenly. I'm not a coffee drinker. On rare occasions, I may treat myself to a mocha or a chai, but I'm not one of those highly-addicted drooling simps who are incapable of meeting the day until they've found the bottom of their first pot. That's probably why it hit me so hard. One moment, I was fine. The next, I felt as though everything around me was moving at the wrong speed, but I wouldn't be able to tell you what the correct speed might have been. I told Gretel that even though I was sitting still in my chair, I felt a little motion-sick. On top of my usual nocturnal restlessness, I might not sleep until Tuesday. There are two bowls left in the freezer. They scare me. A little.

not quite naked

2011-01-21T16:29:00.002-08:00

Having "recovered" from my holiday, I'm back to waking up throughout the night. Last night was peppered with subconscious commercial breaks when I wasn't goggling at the moonlight streaming in my window. I remember something vague about my car that had me not only restless during my next wakeful period, but deeply concerned. It was only my certainty that I had been dreaming that kept me from getting up to check on the Tardis.

Later, just before I got up for the day, was the weird one.

I dreamt that I received an email asking if I was available for an interview the next day. I must have been excited about it, because--knowing that the interviewer had already left their office for the day by the time I received the email--I immediately booked a ticket and headed for the airport. My plan was to contact them early in their morning to confirm the appointment. Only when I scanned my ticket at the gate, on the way out to the plane, did I realize that all I had was a small carry-on: the one that usually has a book and a magazine or two to keep me busy. No change of clothes, no suit (which I rock), not even a toothbrush.

It's the closest I've come to the naked-in-class dream since early in college, when I dreamed I was waiting for the bus to high school without pants. I was dressed except for the pants, but my underwear would not have passed for shorts. Hopefully, the interview didn't hinge on preparedness.

schuss

2011-01-10T14:49:00.002-08:00

ket was right. Granted, there has been no sudden influx of job offers (though I did get an automated rejection email last week--that was nice!), but going skiing was definitely the right call. I spent the weekend on the mountain, and although it was so cold my helmet strap froze to my face mask and the fingertips on my left hand still don't feel quite right (ha.), it was excellent. Sure, I fell a couple times when my goggles frosted over and I couldn't see anything, but I laughed hard each time I fell. Saturday I wandered all over the mountain, visiting all but two of the lifts that were running. Sunday I stuck to the two more remote lifts. I spent my morning on a chair that only had black diamond runs, and by lunchtime I felt not only confident, but cocky. When I went to the next chair, I started playing a game: each time I went down a run, I'd try to take a straighter line, with less turns and more ridiculous speeds. On the rare occasions I failed to notice a jump until after I'd already gone over it (I tend to avoid them until after a little more practice), the surprise of a successful landing got me laughing again as I raced through the powder, leaving confused onlookers in my wake.

holes in my face

2011-01-03T15:56:00.003-08:00

My boss recently told me, no equivocations, that I wasn't going to get a promotion in the next year. I've been here for three years in February; it would be nice to think there was some opportunity for advancement, as they had intimated a long time ago, but it would be foolish to actually believe something like that. Despite spending many long hours (everyone in the office knows I get here long before eight, and at least one of them knows that I get here before seven almost every day. Despite that, I work through lunch, and I'm always here until at least five) doing great work. As I recently saw on another blog's comments, sometimes when you keep your nose to the grindstone, you just lose your nose. Which brings me to my question of the day.

Sunday morning, I had a fleeting dream that I had no ears. The holes were still there, but my own personal satellite dishes were gone. They left behind only outlines on the side of my head, and if I may say so, the outlines exaggerated the size of even my generously-proportioned lobes. For some reason, I think I was also bald. Many things can be as plain as the nose on your face, or right in front of your eyes, or on the tip of your tongue, but what is the significance of the loss of one's ears? Or their replacement by outlines of caricature proportions?

Proof

2010-12-18T07:16:00.000-08:00

I had my annual review yesterday. The main result: I gained a lot of evidence for my theory. Fantastic. I hate being right.

the purgatory of doubt

2010-12-03T11:57:00.002-08:00

The balance is delicate, tenuous, and annoying.

I feel like I've reached a point where I can make no decisions, and resolve no problems.

Making the sizable investment to allow me to ski for the rest of the season feels like giving up on the job hunt, even though I'm not really giving up. But the only friends I have left in town are the mother and son who learned how to ski with me last year, and that's the only time I get to spend with them.

The Great Scot, though he now works for another company, still leads hikes in the area, and snowshoeing season has finally begun. It's an alternative to skiing, but every time I see him now, he likes to remind me of how great his new job is, how wonderful he has it, and his smug satisfaction only serves to remind me that nobody is interested in employing my meager and dwindling skill set, thus ensuring that I never gain the experience necessary to allow me to also become Professionally Highly Desired, as he is. He also likes to remind me that I am young, with all of time stretching out before me, because he apparently forgets that I am not, in fact, twelve.

I want to write more, and finally finish the Big Project I started almost two years ago, perhaps even find a publisher for it, and allow myself to try some of the growing list of other fun writing projects I've though of but had no opportunity to develop. The only way to get better at writing is to write more (I originally started this blog not as an outlet for stunningly creative and well-wrought essays, but as a mental dumping ground where I could write for the sake of writing. I never had any illusions of this being good, and still don't), but I feel that I have precious little time to do so, and I know that I will have even less if I start skiing again. I had once thought that writing could be an alternative career option for me, but lately I feel so completely drained when I leave work that there's nothing left for such alternative pursuits. My real job is killing my imaginary job.

Although I've loved this job for a long time, I've recently acquired another boss. Between the guys in my office, my usual boss, and my Borrowed Boss, everyone agrees that the other office needs their own engineer except the boss that my two bosses share. He thinks I should continue regular trips to the other Oregon office, three and a half hours away, lugging an enormous desktop (because they won't give me a laptop) and going without a phone for a few days at a time (because I'm not important enough to warrant one of the shiny smart phones that everyone above my level gets). I sometimes feel that Borrowed Boss continually changes and tweaks my design for his project to prove I'm doing it wrong in order to justify his own engineer by exposing my gross incompetence. Maybe he'll realize that he'll still have to share an engineer if his point is proven, but it will just be the guy they get to replace the Grossly Incompetent guy in Bend. This does wonders for my self esteem, while adding evidence in the perplexing case of Why I Can't Find a Job. My feeling towards his project have so far ranged through relaxed confidence, annoyance, animosity, begrudging acceptance, and this morning nosedived into fiery hatred. I think my real boss is getting pressed to get me into gear; he never micromanaged before, but he's been so involved in this project I sometimes wonder when he will abandon all pretense and move into my cube.

Many people offer what they think is helpful advice on my job hunt, and I don't want to discourage them from helping me, but many of them are making these suggestions from a purely theoretical position; they have never had to leverage my experience and skill level into today's job market. They have no grasp of how thoroughly unemployable I am, nor of how thin the field of openings are for any engineer right now, much less one with a useless Masters and six years job experience which has never involved anything remotely like Real Engineering. I've never had the luxury of waiting for the perfect job, with opportunity for advancement, growth potential, personal development, and solid, educational experience. I've always had to take the first option that came along because it was the only option, so I've never been able to try to weasel myself into the fields that really interest me or the jobs I really want to do. Despite becoming an engineer because of rather specific long-term goals, I've spent my quasi-professional life drifting further and further away from those goals.

Even if I were in a position to make any decisions now, I don't even know what it would be. I'm down to one near-term goal in life, and I have no idea how to achieve it, because all that other crap stands in my way.

Terrorism

2010-11-18T07:56:00.003-08:00

Lately I've read a bit about the new airport security measures. My interest was partly due to my engineer's fascination with technology, and partly due to my ensuing holiday travels. Because of the San Francisco Airport's abysmal layout, I will have to pass through these new screening measures twice each way. The need to go through security a second time in SF just because my itinerary changes airlines halfway through is bad enough already. With the added measures in place, even I, a generally easy-going, laid-back person, start to feel a little violated.

At the risk of sounding cliched, that means the terrorists have won.

Not that I personally feel uncomfortable about the new scanning technologies, but that we feel the need to implement them. This was supposed to be Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, but now we cower in fear, and eagerly cede civil liberties and our most basic freedoms in reaction to one guy who tried to light his shoe, or the assholes who hijacked two planes and flew them into the most prominent buildings in New York. I agree that we should take measures to make ourselves safe, but those measures should not make us less free--they should be a measure of our potential for bravery. Everyone talks about the two planes that crashed into the New York City towers nine years ago when they try to justify another Patriot Act or body probing that threatens our freedoms, but few people mention the fourth plane.

Remember the fourth plane? It was meant to crash into the Capitol, or maybe the White House, crippling our nation's government. Instead, passengers on that plane rushed the terrorists and stopped them. They were unable to save their own lives; the plane crashed, killing all aboard. But they took action and saved many other lives, even knowing that they themselves could be killed.

I'm not suggesting that the right action to take is wide-spread vigilantism. That way lies madness. That invites idiots and rednecks to attack anyone with a different belief system, and it's that kind of action that has led us down this path--even if some of those idiots were on the other side. Vigilantism leads to division. We must seek unity.

I have a plan, but first, let's look at those scanners. Forget the radiation concerns. You get more radiation from the flight after the scan than you will from the scan itself. Take a look at some of the images they produce. This one is from an article on Wikihow about the new scanners; I don't know the original source. The TSA website indicates that faces will be blurred out and not visible to the technicians viewing the images, but this woman's face is clearly visible, as are every detail of her breasts. I think it looks a little bit doctored, but only because the large gun in the back view should create a bulge that is not visible in the normal photograph. That's not my concern; my concern is that this woman might as well be in a nude photo. Images from the TSA website on the new technology are only slightly more reassuring. While the millimeter wave radar images are not as pornographic as the one linked above, the backscatter images clearly show the gentleman's junk. Even if the images look like extras from an alien invasion movie, that's awfully personal.

Do these new technologies even allow us to detect anything that was slipping through unnoticed before? Were there a lot of hijack attempts I just didn't hear about in the past nine years? What prompted this move? Granted, there are many who argue that we need to stay ahead of terrorist technology, and in principle I agree, but again--this is not the way.

Instead, I propose a different kind of anti-terrorism. I haven't yet come up with a good name for it yet, but to anyone who does come up with something fitting... I don't know, I'll mail you some pepperoni rolls or something.

We can not fight terrorism by living in fear. That's what they want us to do. They want us to become so terrified of what might happen that we stay in our borders, stay in our homes, and stay cowering under the kitchen table, which has since been moved into the basement bomb shelter. Killing us is not the point. The point is to ruin us through fear.

In response, we must be fearless. We must be generous. We must be kind to our friends, neighbors, and strangers. We must show everyone that we will not be swayed by the shadowy threat of possible future violence. We must show them that divisiveness and isolation is not our way.

Help someone you don't know and refuse recompense. Travel abroad happily and openly. Be courteous to the airport staff, no matter how much you may disagree with their enhanced pat-down of your crotch. They're probably no happier about it than you are, and will undoubtedly be harassed all day long. Wish them a good day un-ironically. Live a life of... hope-ism?

Meanwhile, I will consider going to the airport in my biking spandex and pondering where, exactly, they think I might have hidden something unapproved. If the screener is going to see my junk, then everyone else might as well.

skilemma

2010-11-11T11:41:00.002-08:00

There are two ways to consider the dilemma. First, the hopeful view that I will soon find employment in the Greater DC Metro Area, and will not be able to use a season pass at my local skiing destination. Second, the cynical view that--much like causing it to rain by washing your car or hanging laundry outside to dry--the purchase of the season pass could somehow spawn the job offer I seek.

I am by nature a cynic (often confused for pessimism, though I maintain that they are not the same thing. Cynicism, in my eyes, is a healthy choice that helps me to prepare for all possible outcomes by making me aware of potential pitfalls. Pessimism allows one to see only pitfalls, and to create pitfalls from windfalls. Not how I roll.), but I am also--by nature--wholly unsuperstitious. My recent sighting of a black cat grooming itself at the side of a highway exactly 13 miles outside town caused me concern only for the well-being of the cat, who should probably stay away from high-traffic areas for its own sake. I have not only passed under ladders, but climbed them from the bottom, hammer in hand, because that side afforded me easier access to my target. Throwing salt over my shoulder only means that I will have to sweep the floor sooner, and as the dust-wolverines under my stove will attest, frequent sweeping is not among my habits.

However, despite my hopes that things will work out well, and ideally soon, the realist in me can tell from the dearth of job postings over the last several months that this probably isn't likely.

And I really liked skiing last year.

Still... a season pass and season gear rental is big pile of money. At the end of last season, I intentionally avoided all of the gear sales because I had hoped to be in another state by the time this year's ski weather fell upon us. The hopefulness did not serve me well.

To ski, or not to ski... you know the rest.

Torn

2010-11-04T10:02:00.003-07:00

The Russian in Borrowed Boss's office wants to learn the solid modeling software I use. On the one hand, that could work out well for me: one less guy I for whom I have to draw stuff. One less guy whose fractured, heavily accented English I need to decipher in order to translate Physicist Craziness to Mechanical Drawing.

On the other hand, after my recent discovery that my Value Added is not two advanced degrees or years of experience across a stunning array of different fields, but my finely honed ability to make the modeling software sing, dance, slice, dice, lift, separate, sit up, and beg, I'm not sure I want to share this gift with the populace. Even in that reticence, there are two very different vectors.

First, although I am a black belt ninja with that software, and spent two years teaching it to people of all skill levels--proving that I am a gifted instructor, it is easy software to learn, or some combination thereof--knowing how to draw a block is a far cry from mastering the tools. I've developed tricks, shortcuts, and an ever-growing retinue of best practices for managing the quirks of the software, our glacially-paced internal network, and my company's four different part numbering schemes. This is not a weekday-morning lesson. It is a six-week-long course occupying the full attention of instructor and students, and we don't have that kind of time. I, for one, recently discovered that I have two separate, simultaneous jobs.

Second, I realize that Peter the Great is a physicist and probably a pretty brilliant guy, but the physicists in my office regularly ask me to explain thread classifications (one of the simplest aspects of mechanical engineering design) and have demonstrated a very limited grasp of how to operate a pallet jack (it's like a wheelbarrow for packing pallets). I eagerly recognize that I can't do what they do. I don't memorize laser wavelengths (nor what gruesome effects those wavelengths have upon the human body), I have only the barest understanding of chemistry, and I still consider most semiconductor physics to be magic. I don't even know how much our magical machines cost. In essence, I don't pretend to be able to do their jobs. Thus, I don't think I'm comfortable with the implication that just anybody can do my job. Every day, I convert the crazed ravings of brilliant men (who, as mentioned before, are rarely fluent in English) into elegant physical models and clear, concise mechanical drawings. I'll say it again: I'm an artist. I leave it to others to determine whether my art is in modeling, dimensioning, or multilingual geometric translation, but the point stands. Yes, they need their own engineer. No, they're not getting one. They're stuck with me, and as much as I would like to unburden myself of some of their workload, I can't hand it off to just anyone. I may not be a great engineer, but dammit, I'm still their engineer, and the only one they have. Other people can certainly do my job, and there are undoubtedly people who can even do it better, but not everyone can do what I do, and right now, I'm the only one here who can.

Lager and the Lady

2010-10-26T16:11:00.002-07:00

This past summer brought a lot of people to visit me in Oregon. Dad and Lady Grey, Gretel, and BC and his family each made appearances, but the first visit I had was Lager and his lady love. It was also the briefest. They flew out on a Wednesday with an itinerary utterly destroyed by Texas weather complications. I drove to Portland to retrieve them so they wouldn't have to drive 160 miles through unfamiliar territory in the dark three hours after their bedtime. I left my place after Lager called to say that despite various delays, they really would be arriving that night. Later I found out that he called as they boarded the plane, before they spent nearly an hour just waiting to take off. We didn't even leave Portland until after 2AM, and staggered out of bed the next morning after a total of about ten hours sleep between the three of us.

We spent the first day climbing in blistering heat at Smith Rock. The second day we hiked along the MacKenzie River, with spray and cool air blowing off the river to our shaded trail; it was like hiking in air conditioning. On our way back we discovered a mountain observatory built of lava rock, looking like a tiny citadel atop the pass. I drove us around, we went out a couple times, and they left Saturday morning for her cousin's wedding (the actual purpose of their visit, even though they spent the vast majority of it hanging out with me). I saw Lager when he was around her instead of a bunch of guys out climbing, and although the creature was the same, the shades were different. I saw how he fit with her.

This past Saturday, they exchanged rings. Now they're official. I watched her get emotional during the service, and I saw her eyes flash DANGER when the officiate mispronounced her name. Later, I joined the ever-shifting group of people on the dance floor, surprising Lager's lady and WankerBitch, but nobody more than myself. WankerBitch and I heckled each other about who was next, we lightly hazed IPA's new girl, met Stout's girl (who until that point I had only heard great things, and now see them to be justified reports), and molested a cake. The simple way to put it: I had a great time. I realized how much so many of those people mean to me. I was reminded of how far away they are.

I'm working on it, guys. If you want to visit, visit soon. If you want to climb, start making plans. And Lager... take good care of each other. I guarantee you, someone has dibs.

the nicest guy in the world

2010-10-26T15:44:00.003-07:00

When I bought my ticket, I was planning a trip to see two friends get married. Gretel planned to drive in the night before so she could pick me up at the airport. I made that plan months ago, bought the ticket months ago, realized I'd need a new suit months ago. I just didn't think I'd get so much use out of it so soon.

I didn't think I'd attend a wedding and a funeral.

Several months ago, Dr. B fell ill. He's SalesUncle's father-in-law, so I don't really know what that makes him me to him. To most people, it'd be damn little. It just never felt that way. It's not because I had any sort of special relationship with Dr. B, or because we shared any particular bonding experience. It's because Dr. B was the nicest guy in the world. I'm certain of this; whenever I told a story about him, I'd often have to lay some sort of groundwork to provide my audience with context--some idea of who he was. Invariably, I'd say that he was one of the two nicest people I've ever known; a group so exclusive that I don't even know who the third person is. (but the other one's a girl, so he's definitely the nicest guy) He remembered everyone's name, even people he'd never actually met, and always greeted them as though they were life-long friends, and his favorite person in the world. He had a warmth and energy that was not only unsurpassed, but entirely unmet.

And I barely knew him.

I'd met him on several occasions, but usually he would mingle with adults, sharing stories and swapping jokes, while I was outside playing with his grandkids. I learned more about him at his memorial service, which consisted entirely of friends and family telling funny stories about him, than in twenty years of actually meeting the man. How he slept in Grace Kelly's bed, dressed in drag as part of an all-male traveling theater group, sang at a piano bar (where nobody was really supposed to sing, though it thrilled the pianist), compared SalesUncle's golf drives to an elephant's ass ("high and shitty"), and accidentally tipped a waitress $400. How he was the most patient, caring dentist anyone had ever known, and how he called a friend after every Browns game to critique every play (the day after he died, his friend finished watching the game, and had reached for the phone before he realized what he was doing). And everyone agreed--he was the nicest guy you could ever hope to meet.

I knew he was in the hospital, and on his way out. When I landed in Cleveland, I called Dad to see if he'd heard anything; I wanted to try to visit him if I could. Dad didn't know. Twenty minutes later, Dad called back just as we arrived at Gretel's parents' house to tell me that he had just checked his email and learned that Dr. B had died the day before I boarded my plane. The memorial was on Sunday. I focused on my friends' wedding, and tried not to bring up my plans for the day after, because I didn't want to cast a pall on the festivities. (I did joke with someone that after the wedding and the funeral, I should attend a birth, just to have all bases covered)

At the wedding, I danced like a fool. At the funeral, I went tie-less and kept my jacket buttoned so nobody would notice I was wearing a shirt meant for camping. I thought a lot about the Nicest Guy in The World, and about my friends officially starting their life together. There was a symmetry there: ends and beginnings. More importantly, there was happiness. There was great joy. There was love.

get high

2010-10-14T11:11:00.002-07:00

Sometimes, I have trouble getting it up. Wrong conditions, wrong place, whatever. But when I succeed, it never fails to make me happy. Sometimes I'll keep it up for an hour or more, thrilled the whole time. That kite might be one of the best purchases I ever made. Wait, what did you think?

I was at a gear auction and raffle that closed out an all-day event at Smith Rock. Some girl won a dual-line stunt kite in the raffle. Later, a lady sitting in front of me lost the kite's twin in the auction to a 12 year old because the auctioneer was impressed that the kid was paying with his own money. Everybody got a good laugh, and the lady didn't mind--she was knee-deep in raffle prizes anyway. The girl offered to sell her kite to the lady, because she didn't want it, but the lady apologized that she didn't have any cash. "I do," I offered. "How much do you want for it?" That's how I scored a $140 kite for thirty bucks. Sweet. Having flown it, I think I'd even be willing to pay full price for it, but I'm glad I didn't. You know--food, bills, rent.

The tag on the kite's package didn't even show a picture of the kite. It shows a picture of a guy holding the lines, leaning back, and deep furrows in the sand from where he's been dragged down the beach. The guy in the picture has at least forty pounds on me. The tag also informed me that the kite (with a wingspan over seven feet) had a "strong"pull and that the lines were 100 pound test--meaning that my shoulders will dislocate before the lines breaks, so I don't have to worry about it flying away without me.

When I was in Portland a couple weeks ago, my belayer apologized in an email for being a flaky friend of late, and agreed that we should go climbing when I was back in town. That Saturday I told her I was back in town, and we should go climbing Sunday. She replied that Sunday she was moving to Tacoma. I don't know when she planned on going climbing. I was bummed that once again, I was in a climbing mecca with no means of climbing. I was unhappy with people in general after dealing with Borrowed Boss for ten days straight. I decided to go out and fly my Big Damn Kite.

And all was right with the world.

The one time Gretel flew the kite, we had barely enough wind to get it in the air. Her arms were sore the next morning. In good winds, as I had that day and the next, you don't fly the kite so much as wrestle with it in a strangely aggressive dance. I loved it. It requires enough of your attention that you can't even look over your shoulder without practice, and even then not for long, but at the same time it's not mentally taxing; your mind clears. Your body is working hard enough to stay engaged, but not enough to ruin you for the rest of the day. Most importantly, it makes me happy.

I climb because I like the puzzle of it, but I also like the aspect of defying gravity. Not in the sense of breaking laws of physics; more like thumbing my nose at them. Yeah, I know you're there, but right now--while I slither up this improbably steep surface--you don't rule me. You can't make me stay down. Maybe the kite is the same idea. I can't fly myself, but I can make the kite dive and twirl and swoop, and that is still a kind of freedom. Plus, I don't need a belayer.

senior in a moment

2010-10-14T10:03:00.002-07:00

Tonight the office is going out after work to bid adieu to the Great Scot. He's leaving the company, and although his new employer is based on the east coast, he will still be located here in town. So far, I've managed to resist asking him if his east coast employer has an office in the DC area in desperate need of a half-rate (in skill, not pay) engineer.

When I got this job and left the exciting world of software sales, I was thrilled, telling everyone that I finally had a job that would actually require at least one of my degrees and genuinely merit the title "engineer." I felt like I had finally maid all those years in school pay for themselves. Two days ago, in a discussion with my boss on an unrelated topic, I discovered the answer to a question that's been nagging at me for almost three years: Why did they hire me? Turns out it was not my engineering degree from an acclaimed school of which nobody has ever heard, nor my management degree from a self-described "world-renowned" business school, nor even my experience in roller bearings, light fixtures, or home repair.

They wanted a software monkey, and my previous experience teaching the very software for which they needed a monkey made me perfect. Perhaps I am not a real engineer after all. Perhaps, as I often wonder, I was never meant to be. What, then, is my purpose in this world? I view myself primarily as a problem solver, and I had always thought that engineering was the best professional approximation of this; problems encountered here usually run along the lines of "figure out how to fit this thing in that machine, even if there isn't actually enough space for it." Generally speaking, I'm pretty good at that, but the vast bulk of my work here is more along the lines of "make some more pictures of the insides of that machine." Those tasks each require lots of solid modeling, and I love that, because although it's not really problem solving, it's still a kind of puzzle to solve, figuring out how best to model these forms to allow for later changes and upgrades. More importantly, at least here, I'm really frakking good at it. Still, as my boss admitted during that eye-opening chat (and reiterated in an email late last night) "I think we're wasting your brain." I wonder whether they really are.

I recently spent a week and a half in our Portland office doing some MechE work for them, because they apparently don't have a mechanical engineer of their own. I don't know why; they could certainly use one. Borrowed Boss, though he thinks I am a "nice guy to work with" second hand paraphrasing), does not think that I have proper design experience for his tasks. Probably true, but as I have often wondered during job hunts (and occasionally mentioned in interviews), if nobody gives you the opportunity for experience, how exactly are you meant to acquire it? Unfortunately for both of us, he's stuck with me, because our collective boss has let us know that he's not getting his own engineer, and I am apparently responsible for the MechE needs of all our company's operations in this state. My boss placated my request for two paycecks with an offer of twice the job security, and all-expense paid trips to Hillsboro and Milpitas, two places I'd be happy to never visit again. He also described this as a step up to "senior ME," but I don't think that actually means anything. As far as these two offices are concerned, I'm the only ME, so I'm senior, junior, trainee, and Resident Expert.

I don't know what any of that means, besides double the workload for the same pay, but you'd think that they could at least let me telecommute from somewhere I want to be, like wherever Gretel is. Given their aversion to getting me a laptop, that will likely never happen. Maybe they'll at least give me the title upgrade soon. It will look better on my resume than "software monkey."

Unintended consequneces

2010-08-07T15:32:00.004-07:00

Monday. Eight miles north of Sisters, Oregon. Deschutes National Forest. Ponderosa pines tower over the road on both sides, and the only intersections for miles are the Forest Service dirt roads. BC and his family have been staying with me since Thursday night. This is their last day with me, and we've decided to hike along the McKenzie River and see Sahalie and Koosah Falls.

We're only forty minutes from my apartment now, cruising through the forest in the Lincoln Continental yacht they rented to make sure we had seating for all six of us.

"What's the speed limit here?" he asked me. "Fifty-five, but you can probably safely go sixty. Maybe a little over." I was busy poking at his GPS, trying to get it to recognize something near enough our destination that I could stop paying attention to my own GPS, which is great with coordinates, but less than ideal with roads.

"No, I can't." That made me look in the mirror. A sheriff's cruiser was following us. I glanced at the speedometer. BC was hovering around 49 or 50 miles per hour. Hopefully, our friend with the lightbar would either turn around or get the chance to pass us.

His daughter, apparently boneless, flopped low in her seat, chattering something at me. She propped her tiny feet high on the back of the driver's seat. The light bar turned on. Confused, I sized up the angles; even if it were illegal for her to put her feet there, it was impossible for him to see from way back there. Her legs weren't long enough to get that high.

We drifted to the gravel shoulder. Looking across our lenghty bow, I thought again about my suggestion of putting a red light on the left side of the car, and a green light on the right.

When the trooper came to BC's window, I heard every word as they talked. "Sir, I noticed that you're driving well under the speed limit." "Yeah, 'cause I saw you back there."

BC reached back in to the car, got his older son to lean forward enough to access the console pocket holding the rental agreement, and again met the trooper behind the car. Satisfied that they were out of earshot, I finally fell into quiet laughter.

We had been pulled over for driving too slow. His wife was concerned that we didn't have proper car seats for the kids, and was already preparing to make the rental company pay for the ticket. BC had slowed down when he saw the cruiser, and wobbled a little in his lane at the wheel of a large, cumbersome, and unfamiliar vehicle. The trooper explained to him that any time they see someone driving slow and "weaving," they have to assume some sort of intoxication, but was confident that such was not the case today. He told us to have a nice visit, turned around, and drove back towards town. We spent the rest of the day telling him to speed up.

He's not heavy, he's my bike

2010-07-22T10:20:00.002-07:00

When I tell people I'm a biker, their first question is usually "road or trail?" Then I have to explain that although I have a mountain bike, I'm primarily a road biker. No matter who'd asking, this provides them with ample confusion for the rest of the day. If it's a non-biker or a casual biker, they just raise an eyebrow or two in polite consternation, and carefully proceed with follow-up questions about how far I usually ride. A hardcore biker will respond with shock and distaste--why would I ever ride something so heavy on the roads??

My bike was a high school graduation present (so it is also a very old heavy bike), given to me at a time when I had definitely outgrown my previous bike, but still enjoyed riding the gravel roads between the small lakes behind our house. Later, we began joking that giving me such a large, heavy bike was the only way to slow me down enough that the rest of the family could keep up on road rides. When I took it to college, I was able to jump over lots of curbs and passed-out frat boys that would have stopped a real road bike. Later, when I was able to ride for fun again, I was fully equipped to ride any surface, and if I wanted to detour down a dirt path or a gravel road, I was always ready for it--I never had to go home to switch bikes first.

Now that I live in Bend (with dozens of bike trails nearby), I still mainly stay on the roads, but I'm able to explore the forest if I feel like it. And after doing all my training at high elevation with a big, heavy bike, my longest ride of the year (on my brother's hybrid in Ohio) is a breeze. Riding that beast makes me a stronger rider, though it also provides me with ridiculous quads. It is sometimes difficult to buy pants. Really.

Last weekend I rode the Tour Deschutes again. At one point, despite pedaling that monster 20 mph, I was passed by someone's grandmother. In my defense, she had a very nice road bike. Afterwards, after the boys running the bike check insured that my rider number matched my bike and I was not stealing someone else's, I joked that it was a 12 year old mountain bike, and the only person who wanted it was me. Onlookers expressed amazement that I had ridden it so far that day. One woman mentioned that it was hard to get rid of them after that long, and I added that I also couldn't afford a new one.

Sure, I'd like a new bike. Something sleek and fast and made to haul, with a huge front chainring and the kind of gear ratios that enable riding that is more like flight than ground travel, but we've been through so much together, that monster and me. True, I used my brother's bike for the centuries I've ridden, and I know that the only limiting factor in my speed right now is my ride, but... twelve years! I've never had a car last that long! I've owned that bike longer than some of my friends have been alive! It needs a new gearset on the back wheel, and I'd like to provide that, but after that upgrade, some oil, and maybe some work on the front fork, I know it will be ready for another twelve years.

Besides, if I got a faster bike, nobody I know could ever ride with me, and Lance won't return my calls.

Indiana Jones and the Cluttered Bedroom

2010-07-13T08:57:00.004-07:00

My apartment, occupying a portion of the second floor of my building, has a porch in the back looking out through some Ponderosa pines and over a lightly-trafficked road. I love my balcony. I've always wanted one, and now I have a place to hang my chair, read in the fresh air, and yell at squirrels and neighborhood children. There is a small closet off the porch. Because I store my bike, spare tires (Oregonians commonly own two sets of tires for their cars; one is studded for winter use, because it can get so cold that salting the roads does nothing but flavor the ice), and antifreeze there, I call it my garage.

I also have a second bedroom. Because it's where I store everything not in active use, boxes of stuff I haven't opened since I moved, and anything I need to clear out of the other rooms on the rare instances I have company, I call it my basement.

In two weeks, a family of five is going to visit me. I will need that second bedroom to be an actual bedroom. When Lager and his fiance (I haven't come up with a clever name for her yet) visited last week, I took my weekend on Thursday and Friday. Earlier that week, I had told Gretel that what I really wanted was a couple extra days in the week that nobody knew about, so no demands could be made on my time, and I could get other work done. Then I realized that's exactly what had happened! After Lager and his Lady drove away Saturday morning, I was granted two whole days that nobody knew I had--I only had to be willing to ignore the beautiful (albeit very hot) weather outside in order to accomplish the task before me: clean out the basement enough that it looked like a bedroom again.

The first day went very well. I worked my way along the walls and made it halfway around the room. A few things were eliminated, and many others were carefully reorganized to occupy less space. I took my time and granted myself frequent breaks. The second day I encountered heavier resistance. These boxes had much smaller items inside, and closer inspection was necessary.

Closer introspection probably wouldn't hurt.

Countless times I had to stop to ask: what the hell is wrong with me?? Amongst the baffling treasures I dug up:

a three-year-old birthday card that still had money in it
Halloween cards from Mum dating back to when I was still in college. For those who've lost track, that was a VERY LONG TIME AGO.
gift certificates for Chipotle that I somehow won in college. A long time ago.
a gift certificate for whitewater rafting, given to me as a graduation present when I finished grad school. A long time ago.
four different crossword puzzles, started and never finished. None of them had my handwriting on them.
entire pages from the comics section of two different newspapers. I have no idea why they were kept.
a very strange photo of me (fully dressed, you pervs). I know who took it, and where, but I have no idea what I was doing. Or thinking.
receipts for dinner, mass transit, and Alcatraz Island from a trip to San Francisco over four years ago.
birth announcements for all three of BC's kids, and the card I got from his church when I became godfather to the youngest.
stacks of letters from Cookie Aunt, Dad, and two of my great aunts. Those were really entertaining to read; I'm keeping them. It was strange to find a letter from Dad and one from Cookie Aunt in two completely different boxes, both from the same time and both referencing the same event (Dad fixing her bathtub while she was gone on vacation, and discussing the possibility of completely renovating her house. That's something we actually did during one of the long breaks in employment Dad and I shared)

Admittedly, I decided to keep a lot of that, like the letters and gift certificates, and I finished the crosswords during my breaks, but who cares what I had to eat at the house of Nan King? Why do I have piles of business cards from people I will never, ever speak to again? What made those particular pages of comics stay in my Collection of Assorted Garbage so damn long?

On one hand, I've felt inspired to do a better job staying on top of things, and reducing more of the clutter in my life. From time to time, I've wondered whether I could reduce my personal household belongings to a point that I could fit everything in an Airstream trailer, and officially become the crazed hobo that I'm often considered to be, but there's too much good cookware in my kitchen for that to be practical. On the other hand, when I let it build up like it has, it provides a LOT of entertainment when I finally break down and attack it. Once every twelve years.

3

2010-07-13T08:42:00.002-07:00

Normal couples argue about whose family to visit for the holidays, or which brand of butter to buy. We argue about literary criticism, philosophy, and the relative merits of sports and reality television.

Normal couples take vacations on the beach, relax in the sun, have drinks served to them, and exert as little energy as possible. We go on week-long bike rides, hike up mountains, and take long, cold, rainy camping trips (during one such trip, I had to hold the Nutella over the fire until it thawed enough to spread). Normal couples shudder in fear at descriptions of our vacations.

Normal couples treat each other with lavish and romantic gifts on special occasions. For our first Valentine's Day, I gave her not a frilly thing in a striped pink shopping bag, but a biking jersey. She recently gave me a set of Zombie Magnetic Poetry.

For three years (and one week), we have resolutely failed to be a normal couple.

And I think that's fantastic.

targeted advertising

2010-06-30T09:31:00.002-07:00

Each morning at work, I keep a tab open in my browser for the USAToday word games. It only lasts until I've plowed through each of the day's offerings, and I use theirs instead of something more challenging like the NY Times because it's free, easily accessible, and has a much better interface. Do you hear me, New York Times? Better interface = more readers = more advertising revenue. Fix it.

Speaking of advertising, USAToday leaves something to be desired, too. Most of the time, they only use the incongruous but ubiquitous banner ads. Yes, I see them. No, I do not need a new thigh cream. I'm not even sure what that is. Some sort of basting mixture for chicken? The pictures would indicate otherwise, but maybe all those ladies fit into their new swimsuits because the thigh cream is also low-calorie.

I digress.

Quite often, they will supplement the banners with some video below the puzzle, or a large interstitial ad that hovers, looming, until I tell it to go away or my crossword finishes loading in the background. These ads are usually for UFC fights.

Riddle me this: in the Venn diagram illustrating cruciverbalists and sudoku geeks in one circle, and Ultimate Fighting fans in the other, is there any overlap at all? Is there enough to justify spending ad revenue here? Shouldn't those ads show up on the sports page, or the Guns & Ammo online magazine, or the special section for People Who Like To Kick Puppies?

Somehow, I don't think they're getting their target demographic when they advertise to people who use the forums to discuss whether the Saturday puzzle is too easy.

Tanked

2010-06-09T11:23:00.002-07:00

Ladies, stop reading.

Guys, listen closely: we are still losing ground. Although, to be honest, I'm not sure this is ground that matters.

They have taken our tank tops.

Formerly worn only by dudes, the women have not only taken our tank tops, but imbued them with new purpose. They wear them and look hot. They wear them with a coat (or without) and go to the office. They wear them, as we once did, to work out. They can wear them pretty much whenever they want to, and it's always okay.

When we wear them, we look like douchebags. It might have started when, instead of referring to one specific type of undershirt, "wife-beater" came to apply to any tank top worn by a guy. Whatever the reason, we have lost them. Now, when faced with an unusually hot day, we are left with three choices: pretend that T-shirt sleeves can be rolled up as an acceptable venting option, pretend that anyone wants to see us shirtless, or... douchebaggery.

The first option is laughable--run three steps, and you are now one-sleeve-up, one-sleeve-down, working with one hand to re-roll, and becoming just distracted enough to land in dog turds and crash into a tree. Plus, the constant re-rolling of sleeves looks more like a bird's virility display, flashing biceps to attract a mate. For some of you, this may be the goal. I really just want to cool off a little.

The second option is somehow worse. Continually rolling your shirt over your biceps is one thing, but deciding to parade all that you've got is another. I see guys at the climbing gym and many outside crags do this all the time; I don't have that kind of self-image. When I run in local parks, I start with my shirt on, take it off when I get around the first turn, and then focus on moving fast enough that I'm never in one area long enough to feel like a spectacle. By the end of the run, I'm too out of breath to concern myself with stretching and cooling down with the shirt a wadded heap beside me. It helps that these runs are mainly through the forest.

The last is a closed option for us. Many ladies think we're douchebags no matter what we do, but the tank top will cement any unformed opinions against us. Again, it may not actually matter. They're only tank tops. But I like to have the option. And I wonder about the day they stopped making us look good and started making the ladies look good.

Sexibrarian's Wetting Day

2010-06-07T08:49:00.004-07:00

When Mum (not Mom, though she agreed) was still a scout mom, she posited that you could tell how much fun the boys had on a campout by how dirty we were when we got back.

Using that scale, I went to the Best Wedding Ever this weekend. I showed up in shorts, sandals, and a Hawaiian shirt (an ensemble matched to the color of the shirt by three younger attendees) and left with mud up to my knees. Mud was splattered on everyone, and nobody cared. We waded between the pavilion with the booze and the tent with the food. Ladies left their "cute shoes" in cars in favor of more mud-friendly flip-flops. My Hawaiian shirt buddies and the bride's grown brother chased each other through ankle-deep puddles. An extended cornhole tournament was made more entertaining by the large splashes made by the beanbags, even when they landed on relatively dry surfaces.

Dirt and rain aside, it was still fantastic. The attire was relaxed, an iPod connected to an amp was our DJ, a homemade photo booth gave everyone ample opportunity to mime their well-wishes, and four long tables of potluck fed us all to a state of extreme gastronomic exhaustion. Hardly anyone asked me when I would "put a ring on it," and the one person who did was satisfied with the answer (plus, the Wren and I are close enough for her to get away with that). I couldn't see the bride's face during the ceremony, but the groom looked ridiculously happy throughout the 3.6 minute duration. I never saw either of them look less than ecstatic all weekend.

Thank you, Sexibrarian and Mr. Sexibrarian, for showing all of us a good time and not having a ridiculous, showy wedding. The mud was much more fun.

In the Bag

2010-05-14T09:57:00.002-07:00

Like many of the other instances of me messing with people, it began without warning, even to me. That's the great part about having a natural gift for such things: it can even take me by surprise. That also means that I can sell it so easily, so naturally, that it takes in others well outside the target range. In this case, the collateral targets wised up long before the primary, but they were nice enough to let things play out because, let's face it, it was a whole lot funnier that way.

My cousin Rage was on her first GOBA. She was sharing a tent with Pie Aunt, and borrowing a paratrooper bag for most of her things. Picture a squarish duffel bag, a little over three feet square, and about two feet side-to-side. The bags get thrown on trucks in the morning, and cast out of the trucks early in the afternoon. On the evening of the second day, Rage noticed that the zipper had busted on the paratrooper bag she had borrowed. Pie Aunt wisely suggested she consult a mechanical engineer, as we are widely famed for being able to fix (or jerry-rig) damn near anything.

I looked over the bag, holding the liberated zipper pull in one hand. Inspiration struck. "The good news is, I think it can be fixed. The bad news is, the way the zipper came off, it can only be fixed from the inside, and you're the only one small enough to fit." Her eyes boggled "WHAT??" "Don't worry," I assured her. "I'll give you a flashlight and a pair of pliers, and I'll talk you through it from outside."

She was hesitant, but I sold it well. Behind her, I could see Pie Aunt smirking. Gretel did her best not to break; it helped that Rage never looked in her direction. Nobody even considered turning the bag inside out, much less question whether I was, in fact, a lying bastard. Instead, we handed her a Mag-Lite and a Leatherman, and suggested she take her shoes off so she'd have more room to work.

As soon as she was inside, trying very hard to maneuver into a position where she could get at the end of the zipper, I pulled the handles together and lifted the bag. A screaming, squirming duffel was on its way to the truck, though we weren't able to get the zipper closed. Instead, we took lots of pictures of my cousin, paralyzed with laughter, spilling out of a large green piece of luggage. They will come in handy on prom night.

Rooftop chase scene

2010-05-12T09:29:00.001-07:00

Last night was plagued with dreams of cancer and a strange version of Colonial Williamsburg with steeply curved gables.

Perhaps that means it's time to do something.

Munchies

2010-04-29T12:45:00.002-07:00

Possessed of a ravening appetite, I take a messenger bag full of food to work each day. It looks like a large lunch, but is in fact a series of small snacks, scheduled for consumption throughout the day. It's not enough that I seem incapable of making it between breakfast at 6 and lunch around 12 or 1; most of the time I start getting hungry around 9, manage to ignore until 11, then dive into my daily stash. Usually, "manage to ignore" means that I only sneak very small snacks, like a couple graham crackers, or a piece of chocolate. Lunch is a festival, and I tend to get so excited about an official meal that I accidentally eat everything that's left, though I usually manage to salvage a piece of fruit for late in the afternoon. Sometimes, this requires a stern reminder that I rode my bike to work, and need to be able to pedal back up the hill at the end of my day.

The strangest part of this phenomenon is that I spend the bulk of my day sitting quietly at my desk. I long for the days when I actually get to build something (this afternoon, for instance, I get to rebuild one of our machines. I've looked forward to it since the frames arrived late on Tuesday.) and get further from my desk, where dangerous Hunger Rays emanate from my monitor. Days spent hiking in the desert or mountains for hours don't have the same effect. I still get hungry, of course, but it's on a more reasonable schedule, and with far better reason. When I do feel the need to snack (often because the rest of the party has settled upon various rocks and logs and begun to draw Clif bars and sandwiches from their packs), I tend more to nibble, eating only a bit before continuing along the trail. Perhaps I act upon an inherent instinct to preserve my rations as long as I can, should the party become lost and resort to cannibalism. Maybe--this is my favorite theory--my body reacts to activity not by consuming energy, but by generating it.

Two weekends ago, I was on a no-trail hike in the desert with the Great Scot's hiking club. It involved lots of scrambling and steep terrain, and at least one person thanked the Scot for "showing (him) what (his) limits are." The Scot's wife and I instead looked along the ridge that described the much longer loop we were there to scout and immediately began planning an all-day trek. We would need more water, we agreed, and more food. The problem as we saw it was the susceptibility of most trail mix formulations to heat. She has a similar vulnerability, so the hike has to be soon, before the high heat of summer hits the shrub-steppe. I have until then--or my upcoming Rock Climbing Tour of States Surrounding Ohio--to perfect this arcane mixture.

Dad makes great trail mix, but two of its greatest features (M&Ms and chocolate covered raisins) are exactly the reason I need to find a new recipe. Chocolate does not perform well in the desert. Nearly two decades ago, we learned that even yogurt-covered raisins can fall victim to the heat and humidity of the Appalachian Trail in July. Luckily, they re-coagulated in the relative cool of night, leaving us with yogurt-peanut-sesame stick bars in the morning. With raisins!

I don't just want to take a sack of salty food, though. Ideally, this would be a blend providing well-rounded nutrition with good flavor. Almonds and cashews for fats and proteins, dried fruit for energy, vitamins, and fiber, and maybe some pretzels because I really like them. Pieces should all be about the same size, or all your delicious sunflower seeds fall to the bottom. Good trail mix should also be crush-resistant (a problem for pretzels) and compact, and as mentioned above, this variety needs to be heat-resistant as well. If I can perfect it soon enough, I can use it all summer on hikes, take it on GOBA and climbing trips, and keep some in my bike bag for emergency use on long rides.

The question remains: what to include? Thus begins the voting. If you were to design the perfect trail mix, what would you include? Why? Help me out, and when I decide upon the final formula, I'll share it here.

Mortality, or vitality?

2010-04-14T14:39:00.002-07:00

Today we proudly bring you another post inspired by RadioLab.

In a show dedicated to the afterlife, and what may comprise it, is a short recollection of a man who decided to kill himself by jumping off a bridge.

It took four seconds for him to fall all the way to the water.

In the instant that his hands left the railing, he realized he had made a mistake. He spent the next four seconds flashing through images in his mind of all the things he'd never get to see or do, and regretting his decision to vault over the handrail, even though it was something he had been considering for a long time, and fixating on that morning. He even thought as he kissed his wife goodbye before he left for work that it would be the last time he'd see her, but it wasn't until he was over the rail, falling to the water, that he finally realized he was wrong, and that he wanted to live.

He hit the water in a cannonball, and suffered only bruised feet and backside. The show offered numbers on how many people have jumped (in the hundreds), how many have survived (in the low dozens), and how many of the survivors regretted jumping even as they were falling, but I don't remember any of the numbers. Something about the experience, brushing close to death, jogged something loose inside them and made them want to live.

Once in my life, maybe twice, I've almost been killed. Even that low estimate may be an exaggeration. I've never had my life flicker before my eyes, and I've never had the flashes this man described.

But I love to go rafting, bike hard, ski fast, and climb big rocks.

I even like falling off the rocks. I have complete trust in my gear and belayer (if you don't, you shouldn't climb with them), and for that moment of free fall, however fleeting it is, I'm floating through the air. It's fun for me.

There are those who may describe me as an adrenaline junkie, though I've never really thought of myself in those terms. Several people have directly accused me of taking ridiculous risks, doing stupid things, and having a death wish. None of those are true. I'm exceptionally careful, meticulously tend to my gear, gain a full understanding of my undertakings before executing them, and I love what I do. I think people say those things about me and my favorite activities because they're terrified of what I do, and labeling me as insane or an idiot is the easiest way of dismissing what I do with no real consideration.

The truth is, I'm never taking any serious risks. My gear is well-maintained, I always work with plans, and I have enough training and experience to handle any accidents that may happen along the way. The truth is, the people who live in fear and would never consider trying the things I do as a matter of course will probably never have as much fun or appreciation for their lives as I have every day.

And I didn't even have to jump off a bridge to know it.

April Recipes

2010-04-09T16:45:00.002-07:00

Peanut butter cake, creamy cocoa frosting, and custard pie, all from Betty Crocker. (What can I say? It's a classic.)

The first two were variant recipes. The cake turned out very well. The frosting made the cake super ugly. Turns out my lack of interest in frosting may foster an inability to make it. Really, the frosting was ugly as hell.

I made the pie in a crust recipe I got from Dad. I've used the crust before to make an apple pie that turned out ok, but for whatever reason it didn't go as well this time around. It's supposed to be a 2-crust recipe, and I instead used it to make two single crusts (which would ordinarily involve more crust, because the bottom of pies are bigger than the tops). The first was for a shrimp quiche (not as good as I'd hoped. I'm going back to bacon quiches). Maybe my pie dish is a little bigger than the crust recipe can accommodate; by the time I'd rolled it out enough to have enough surface area, it was too thin. Pulling the wax paper off the crust once it was in the dish pretty much destroyed it. What was left developed gaps and cracks in the initial baking. The final result of the custard pie tasted fine (I baked it a little too long, incorrectly expecting it to set more in the oven), but looking at the cross-section is pretty funny. Over-baking made the top more sturdy than the bottom, and somehow the crust ended up floating on the egg mixture as it bakes, so it's not actually the bottom layer of the pie in most places. Funny, tasty, but not something to show anyone else. Luckily, I had planned to eat it all anyway.

My Slide of the Mountain

2010-03-29T08:50:00.003-07:00

Bonus points for getting the reference in the title.

Mt Bachelor (known as Bachelor Butte until it became a ski area and a clever marketer realized nobody knows what a "butte" is, and everyone starts giggling when they see the word) offered a unique deal this season. Two hundred bucks gets you five lessons with gear included, and a 12-day pass (plus 50% off next year's season pass). They targeted people who had never skied before the same way drug dealers target first-time users--let 'em try it cheap to get them hooked, and gain a customer for life--because skiing is like crack.

And I love it.

Skiing, not crack.

I remember the day of my first lesson, getting frustrated because I couldn't satisfy the instructor with my pizza-stop, then realizing later that I wasn't doing it right because my pizza slice wasn't ridiculously wide--something the instructor probably should have noticed and pointed out to me. Little did I realize that was the last day anyone would ever expect me to use the pizza stop. After the lesson, I spent another forty-five minutes duck-walking up the tiny slope near the lodge where the lesson had been held, mad at myself for not being one of the people deemed good enough to try the bunny slope at the end of the lesson. Luckily, I was too stubborn and cheap (I'd already paid, dammit!) to do anything but keep trying. I spent the rest of the afternoon skiing the low, gentle bunny slope by myself, carefully dodging the hordes of tiny children and other inexperienced newbies deftly flailing and colliding with one another. I can remember thinking that I was completely insane to go down the slightly steeper left-hand side of the same run. By the end of the day, I felt pretty good about myself. Stupidly proud, actually.

I've skied once a week since then, and twice this weekend. Now I ski black diamond runs when the cloud wrapped around the mountain is blowing so much snow that you can't see the trees on the opposite side of the run, and your best guess for the right direction is "downhill," an idea which in itself is ludicrous because the sky looks exactly like the ground and with no visible references, the only way to tell which way is down is by which leg is bent less. I'm a much better skier now than I was even at the end of my lessons, due in large part to a complete inability to access the part of my brain that tells me what I'm about to do is a very bad idea. I never cared much for his opinions, anyway.

About four weeks ago, I started carpooling up the mountain with a mother and son I met in the lessons--three of our lessons overlapped, and my nova-bright yellow hoodie made me easy for them to find and recognize anywhere on the mountain. I like skiing with them, if only because it gives me someone to talk to and gauge myself against week-to-week, but I think my only advantages over the kid are being two or three times his weight, and crazier by a similar factor. Still, I often look over my shoulder after doing something ill-advised and way too fast only to see him finishing the same maneuver, with greater air time.

Saturday I skied with a new climbing partner who rides a snowboard, but was a little out of practice. Sunday I skied with the mom, while the son was off doing his own thing somewhere off-mountain. Though I enjoy talking and skiing with both of them, the mom did notice a common disparity. "You should try coming up yourself sometime just to see how many runs you can get in a day," she suggested after catching up to me at the chairlift. "You're really fast." I had been thinking the same thing, for a slightly different reason.

I've been trying to goad the mother along, to get her to believe that she can ski better, because I think she can make the turns if she convinces herself she's capable of them. I don't want to take her son off onto crazy parts of the mountain without her, but it means I don't get to explore the crazy parts unless I go up alone. Even on less challenging terrain, I tend to hang behind the people I know so I don't have to hike back up to them if something goes wrong--and it sometimes does. I'd like to ski by myself again this season partly because I want to see how many runs I can get in a day, and partly because I don't want to have to worry about anyone else. I want to ski the diamonds as they are meant to be skied--or as closely to that as I can approximate--to make myself a better skier. I want to drop down runs so fast my ears pop. I want to say that I started this season without any idea of how to ski, and by the end of the season I had skied every run on the mountain (and there are many--it's the seventh-largest ski area in the US) and skied them well. Because tides are turning, times are changing, and I don't know how much longer I'll get to ski here. I'm going to get my money's worth while I still can.

March recipes

2010-03-23T10:05:00.003-07:00

If I'm going to try three new recipes a month, I think it will help if I can keep track of what they were somewhere. This is as good a spot as any.

March recipes:

Cornbread battered fried fish with
creole sauce
cheesy double chocolate cookies

notes:
Fish was good, but I needed to thaw the fillets before dipping them; I had to use a brush to get them coated with the egg mixture because they didn't fold enough to dip in themselves. Cooked well, though. Creole sauce makes a little more than I need for three catfish fillets, but very tasty. Try with fresh mushrooms next time. Cookies are good, very soft, got good reviews from testers, but I can only take so many of them. I made two batches this month, I'm only halfway through the second batch, and I'm REALLY ready for something new. Maybe I'll freeze the rest tonight and save them for some time when I want cookies but I'm too lazy to do anything about it.

sources:
A Skillet Full provided fish and sauce. Cookies from 101 Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Remombering

2010-03-22T13:57:00.002-07:00

Previously, I promised I would stay off this topic for various reasons, all of which seemed sound to me, but it's been on my mind lately, and writing stuff is usually how I get things out of my head. At least, it's how I clear the table. The dishes might go back in the cupboard, but I know they're there, and I know I'll be eating on them again soon, so they're never forgotten or ignored or permanently retired, just shelved for a bit.

I've recently discovered the fantastic NPR program RadioLab, and faced as I was this past week with an insurmountably dull task at work, I kept my brain entertained with podcasts of old shows while my diligent fingers clicked and dragged, making sure that all necessary files were in the proper directories. Today I listened to one about where we get our concept of self, and in the final segment, Robert Sapolsky talks about the end of his father's life, and how his father's stories began to get confused with Sapolsky's own stories. Memories that originally detailed the father's arrival on Ellis Island became memories of his arrival in San Francisco (where Sapolsky had recently moved) and his first sighting of the Golden Gate Bridge (built decades after the father's arrival in the US). After his father's death, it got even weirder: Sapolsky started incorporating his father's life into his own. He would wear his father's blue flannel shirts instead of his own, he carried a bottle of his father's nitroglycerin tablets (with no medical need for them whatsoever) and would become frantically distracted if he couldn't find them, and once gave a lecture to his students in which he slipped into "octogenarian mode," telling them that they didn't know how good they had it, and didn't even realize it until hours later.

It caught my attention because I do it, too.

The reasons may not be the same, but in many ways for years after Mom's death, and even now, I felt like bits of her were left with me. I found myself thinking of Dad by the nickname Mom gave him, though she only ever used it when referring to him, not addressing him--and so did I. In my thoughts, he was the nickname, but when I talked to anyone, he was "Dad." I've never told anyone about this. I've never told anyone that although I tried to learn all she had to tell me about identifying plants, trees, and birds, I didn't pick up nearly as much as I wanted to--but now I seek out identification guides and relentlessly stare at foliage, trying to catalog it all in my mind so I can gain her mysterious power. I cook because I want to be as good as she was. I bike because she taught me. I am more happy outside than I am inside because she was.

A few months ago, I lost a ring that she had given me. It was very dear to me, and I was heartbroken when I realized the loss. A digital picture frame sits on my desk at work, and when I turn it on in the mornings, hers is the first face I see. For over a week I couldn't turn it on. I felt like I had failed her, and even though I knew how stupid it was, I didn't want to face her knowing that I had lost something she had bought simply because she knew I should have it. It made the silver frog I carry in my pocket at all times even more important.

Maybe I do these things because the objects and skills are the most potent things she left me; parts of her I can keep after she left. Maybe there really is a part of her left in me. A real, semi-intangible shadow guiding my actions. I think it's more likely that I just want to find a way that I can connect with someone I can no longer talk to, or laugh with, or learn from.

Yesterday, halfway up a chairlift, a woman I met in skiing lessons and who has shared a carpool up the mountain with her young son and me for the past three weeks called me on one of my more subtle evasions. "I notice you always talk about your dad in the present tense, but you only talk about your mom in the past tense. "Yeah." "When did she--" "--Nine years ago." I commended her for noticing a distinction that gets by most people. She said she noticed three weeks earlier. I think she had spent that long working up the nerve to ask. I told her that while I like talking about Mom, "my mom is dead" is one of the all-time classic conversation killers. She told me she could tell I liked talking about her, and that we must have been close... and we never touched on the topic again. The rest of the chair lift was silent. Luckily, they later told me about a book the son had called "How to fossilize your hamster and other experiments," which independent of its contents has to be the best title ever.

porn for mathematicians

2010-03-16T16:06:00.004-07:00

One of my co-workers is Chinese. He was born in China, moved to America, and in addition to English and (at least one dialect of) Chinese, he also knows a good deal of Japanese. However, while his English is functional (man's a brilliant physicist), there are wide gaps in his command of the language, and he sometimes comes to me to fill these gaps. This leads to a lot of entertaining conversations. The Great Scot brought a word-a-day calendar in to live beside our coffee machine, and the Red Menace and I sometimes discuss the words (which are sometimes, but not always, new even to me), their pronunciations, and etymologies.

Sometimes, the conversations are not as highbrow.

Yesterday I caught him carrying around what looked like a text-heavy manga, and asked why he was reading comic books at work. He pointed to the cover (a gibberish mish mash of Chinese characters) and told me it was a book on how to do Fast Fourier Transforms. I countered that he could tell me the title was anything, and I would be forced to believe him, but he then pointed out that several pages were littered with sine waves, mathematical formula, and Greek characters.

Today I took another look at his "textbook," and found pages illustrating the schoolgirls (who seemed to be lead characters) prancing about in their underwear, and acting as dominatrix to a male classmate. I'm still not sure how any of that relates to FFTs, but I'm getting a clearer idea of why Asian students have a reputation for higher math and science scores. With books like that, I'd probably study more, too. Showing these examples to another coworker led to a new discussion on language.

RM: what is "smut"?
me (and co-worker): porn. Dirty stuff. That picture there.
me: Do you know what a bodice ripper is?
RM: A what?
me: Bodice-ripper.
RM: bottom-stripper?
me (thinking that he's actually not far off, then explaining that bodices are antiquated ladies' undergarments, and how trashy romance novels got the attending appellation): ...anyway, bodice-rippers are another good example of smut.

The Days Are Just Packed

2010-03-01T16:14:00.002-08:00

(bonus points for getting the ironic reference)

For the past seven weeks or so, I've been a perpetual motion machine. Granted, there were long periods of desk-sitting, but I maintain that those can often be more exhausting than anything else I do. Still, after working full weeks, I went hiking (often snowshoeing) on Saturdays and skiing on Sundays. Every week.

Two weeks ago, Gretel was in town and I took Monday off to hike some more with her (after the usual snowshoeing/skiing combo weekend), then dropped her off at the airport at 5 am and returned early to the office to work a 12-hour day. Last weekend, I climbed Friday night, snowshoed Saturday, went to the Great Scot's house for a "house concert" that night (arriving early and staying late to convert his dining room into a concert hall and back again), and skied runs from the summit of the mountain early the next morning. Monday I drove to Portland at 4:30 AM and explored the Hoyt Arboretum while the dealer performed the usual fluid level checks on the Tardis. That afternoon, sitting in a library and utterly failing to focus on whatever I thought I should be doing, was my first indication that I may have overextended myself, a little. Maybe.

Then I spent the rest of the week working ten and eleven hour days to make up for taking Monday off, and went climbing twice more.

Early this past Saturday, I drove out into the desert with five coworkers to shoot each other and several other people, strangers to me, with paintballs that were usually aimed at my ass, fingers, inner thigh, and other unusually tender areas. Afterward, I crammed a sandwich in my face as I packed the car, and spent the rest of the afternoon teaching someone how to belay (which necessitated climbing a couple routes) for the sole purpose of liberally exploiting that capability in the future. We returned to the Tardis as the moon rose, and thought it an excellent night for snowshoeing. I didn't get back to my place until midnight, but it was a gorgeous night.

Yesterday, I finally decided to give myself some real time off. Somehow, I hadn't managed to sleep through the night, and my afternoon experiment called for testing whether sitting in a comfy chair on the back porch in warm sunshine with a good beer and a better book would finally grant me passage to the secret realm called Nap extolled by so many. It didn't.

I'm going climbing again after work. I no longer hold any belief that crippling exhaustion will allow me to sleep through the night, but that won't stop me from trying.

Golympics?

2010-03-01T16:08:00.003-08:00

Maybe I'm softening.

I certainly hope not.

Yes, occasionally, I'd flip over to NBC to see if there was anything cool. I still didn't get to see any biathlon (described in a local paper as a "sport designed for assassins") or skeleton, but I did get to see a little bit of downhill skiing and snowboard madness. Maybe my latest hobby has given me some appreciation of what they're doing, or at least better knowledge of what's going on. I never progressed to Gretel's level of sleep-sacrificing devotion to the games, and I always gave up on it when figure skating reared its ugly sequined head, but I did watch. A little.

And it's still more fun to do it myself than to watch it on tv.

Probably the same reason porn never interested me.

The Great Beard Experiment

2010-02-16T07:04:00.001-08:00

Day 1: Determined by apathy, I skipped shaving this morning. The plaguel-bearing boss will probably be in today. Screw it, he doesn't know my name. I'll say I'm the janitor.

Day 2: Went snowshoeing today. Decided I could use the extra warmth, so I skipped shaving again. Nobody noticed. I may need hormone supplements.

Day 3: It's Sunday. I never shave on Sundays.

Day 4: I'm curious now. Going to see how long it takes me to grow something that qualifies as a "beard."

Day 5: It will take a lot more than five days.

Day 6: I have just enough to occasionally trap lint. Perhaps if I collect enough lint, I can hasten progress. Doing laundry tonight.

Day 7: A week without shaving, and I finally have a five o'clock shadow. This could take months.

Day 8: Neck itches like crazy. Finally realized I can shave that much without sacrificing the experiment.

Day 10: It's Sunday. see: Day 3

Day 11: A homeless guy outside the Post Office yelled at me for "moving in on (his) turf."

Day 12: Boss asked me if I was growing a beard. He wants to enter his in the contest this summer.

Day 13: Co-worker's wife said I look like the ski instructors, many of whom seem to grow beard for warmth. I always see them crusted in ice. Not sure how that's warm.

Day 14: Different co-worker asked if I'm growing a beard. Told him I'm just lazy. It took them two weeks to notice.

Day 15: If I were Amish, they'd excommunicate me. At this rate, I'll never make it into ZZ Top.

Day 16: Looking a bit grizzled. Spent the afternoon on the back porch, yelling at kids to get out of my damn lawn.

Day 17: Sunday. See: Day 10

Day 18: I once told Gretel I'd never grow a beard in Ohio because my brother has facial hair, and one of the biggest reasons I had to move out of the state was to avoid the constant, flagrantly erroneous observations by others that we "look just alike" and "could be twins." Today the Great Scot told my boss (who grows a short beard once or twice a year and in those periods bears an uncanny resemblance to my brother) that if I had glasses and were a couple inches shorter, we could be twins. I've never wanted to shave more in my entire life.

Day 19: Boss told me I looked "shaggy" and asked where Scooby-Doo was. Told him I sold him to a nice Korean family. I never gave him grief about his beard, even when he went walrus.

Day 20: Sometimes, when I chew, I can see fuzz at the base of my peripheral vision.

Day 21: It would take far too long to make this worthwhile. Individual hairs get longer, but despite the ridiculously thick hair on top of my head, my face sports no such lushness. Still, it could be worse. Luckily, the last time I actually wanted facial hair, I was eight and a big Magnum, P.I. fan. I look forward to freeing my face again and feeling the wind in my... chin?

Day 22: Picked Gretel up at the airport. She laughed. Hard. Not a good sign.

Day 23: Gretel referred to me as a "bearded mountain man." No word on whether that's a good thing.

Day 24: Sunday. We went skiing. Face crusted with ice. Still cold under the crust. Beard apparently serves no functional purpose. Spent a lot of time in the afternoon wondering how much snot was frozen to my face.

Day 25: Always see fuzz in lower peripheral vision. Distracting.

Day 26 (day of post): Dropped Gretel off at airport. She's still laughing. I look like one of the earlier scenes in Teenwolf. I only hope my razor can mow all this down tonight.

Nolympics

2010-02-12T09:03:00.002-08:00

Gretel, an avid fan of televised sports, will be on a plan tonight during the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. I suspect this might reduce her to tears. Luckily, high altitude tends to seal her tear ducts shut, so nobody will bear witness to her grief.

Every two to four years, she gets whipped up into an apoplectic frenzy over The Games (a ridiculous name, I might add, since the vast majority of the athletic contests involved are not "games"). We have been dating long enough for me to know this very well, though this is only the second time I have witnessed it for myself. It's remarkably easy for me to witness it, because I am in no way distracted by the actual Games.

That's right. Olympics come and go, and I don't care. Not at all. Go ahead, throw your broken bottles. Sneer at my lack of culture. Call me "unamerican," as Gretel does (particularly puzzling, because despite the coverage by American sportscasters, these events are actually a global contest, participated in by over a dozen countries!!). See if I care. I promise you I will not.

My antipathy towards sports has a long and dark history, but its roots are a rant for another day. Suffice to say that I have no plans to watch a slow-moving parade for three hours tonight. I will not tune in over the weekend to see how the curlers of Mozambique are doing, nor gaze in rapture at twelve continuous hours of ice-dancing (nor will I ever understand how this is different from figure skating). However, I will go snowshoeing up Tumalo Mountain, and spend several hours skiing on Mt. Bachelor.

That's how I enjoy sports. Outside. Doing them.

On the rare occasion that I get an urge to allow a sport my cursory interest, I am inevitably disappointed. The Tour de France is only ever broadcast on obscure cable channels usually devoted to bass fishing. In college I was a fencer, and made repeated failed efforts to watch it during the Summer Olympics, just to see if it was any less perplexing when I wasn't the one getting thrashed about the head and shoulders with three feet of whip-fast steel. I've even tried to watch the winter biathlon, because it's skiing with guns, and if any other widely-accepted sport sounds more bizarre than that, I haven't heard of it. But the problem with trying to watch anything during the olympics is this: instead of something cool, you will see boring crap.

In the summer, the airwaves are clogged with interminable hours of gymnastics. Yes, they are incredibly fit and make me feel bad about myself. Yes, dudes who can do the Iron Cross and uneven bars are pretty damn boss. You've made your point. Now show something else.

In the winter, we are treated to 30 hours of figure skating a day. Every time I turn the tv on, it's more damn figure skating. Where are the skiers with guns?? Where are the lunatics riding skeletons down icy chutes??

Every two years, the world gathers to put on a show of athletic prowess, German women with hormone imbalances, and Chinese mutants specially bred to exhibit to the world their government's total control over the lives of the citizens. And all we ever see is figure skating and gymnastics. There is so much more to the Olympics--or there is meant to be.

Cities battle with each other for the chance to host the Olympics in hopes of pulling in tourist dollars, but many cities have found that hosting the games is ultimately a huge financial drain. Enormous stadiums must be built, and housing provided for athletes and trainers. The vast majority of the infrastructure created for the Olympics is never used again, and often sits idle, slowly decaying. One can't even argue that moving the games around the globe allows more people access to them, because tickets are so prohibitively expensive that very few people can afford them anyway. The opening and closing ceremonies are ever-escalating exhibits of greater ridiculousness and fanfare. They're so over the top that the last time I actually watched them, I fell asleep from boredom.

I might actually watch the Olympics if they were still a display of varied athleticism. I might be interested if we were offered a wider array of events to watch. But they're not, and we won't, and I hate spectator sports anyway.

Enjoy the figure skating. I'll be outside, having more fun.

Not what I Mensa say

2010-02-03T08:53:00.003-08:00

Last year, Lady Grey gave me a desk calendar for Christmas with daily puzzles. Variant sudoku, word ladders, pattern recognition, that sort of thing. She gave me a similar calendar this year with the terrifying word "Mensa" in the title.

No boy with a fascination for detective stories and superheroes is capable of growing up without a fixation on secret societies and clubs. Although Mensa is known worldwide, it still kind of counts, and their qualifications for membership add to the mystique. All you need to do to join is be really, really smart. I used to picture Mensa clubhouses sporting rooms with large fireplaces, expansive bookshelves, and exotic wood paneling (probably because I had seen rooms like that depicted in men's hunting clubs in old movies or tv shows, and it was the best image for my young mind of what these elite societies looked like on the inside); some sort of cozy brain trust. The idea that there was a group of smart people just for the sake of being smart was richly enticing, especially because young me had no other social prospects. I wasn't in band, had no interest in team sports, and didn't hang out with hoi polloi. Once a week (and for only three years--funding for gifted programs is woefully inadequate when that money could be spent on football bullshit) I went to a different building to have a different class with the other different kids, but most of them were also in band or sports. All I had was being smart. And every other kid knew what we were and where we were going, and it caused a divide. Because I didn't have something else to connect me with them--a working knowledge of baseball or minor scales, for instance--I was just "that smart kid."

Until I got to college, with people who had gained the benefit of a real education, and I instantly became an idiot. In my Fields class, I was even appointed the Stupid Guy, and served my purpose by asking all the dumb questions the rest of the class wasn't willing to ask. I bridged the gap between the prof and my classmates, and took his abuse for it, but I still had no idea what was going on (and eventually left electrical engineering because of it).

Before I entered the Different Class, before it was even an option for me, they gave me some sort of IQ test. I don't remember taking it. I only remember the conversation I had with the Different Teacher, years later, when I was in high school and out of the Different Classes (and continually disappointed because the two advanced science classes my high school offered where never offered to me, despite exemplary grades in science. Many positions in those classes seemed to be granted politically rather than academically. I never found out why I couldn't take them), and she finally told me how I had scored. Very high, but not actually a "genius". It was a little hard for me to take, because smart was all I had. I'm never going to get a major league baseball contract, or become a rock star, or be "discovered" by a talent agency. Whatever I get in life, it will be gained through intelligence alone, and she was telling me I didn't have as much to go on as I might have hoped. My one asset was overstated.

That might have changed since then. I'm taller, faster, stronger, and more hirsute than I was when I took the class; it stands to reason that my intelligence might have also increased in the intervening years. But I've never taken the Mensa test. Never even wanted to. Because if I never take it, I can keep thinking that I might pass and be accepted, but if I do take it, the inevitable failure will serve only as a reminder that I'm not smart enough.

And smart is all I have.

And since I've been trying for two days to word-ladder "tooth" into "brush" in seven steps, I might be in serious trouble.

the color and the shade

2010-01-25T14:57:00.002-08:00

When I first made my westward migration, I was struck in Wyoming by the intense beauty projected by only four colors. Deep blue sky hovered over green firs surrounded by pure white snow and richly red rocks. The limited palette made the effect more alien and surreal, and the intensity of each of these four basic shades left me awestruck. Looking at a thriving flower garden with its cacophony of various hues is beautiful, yes, but the multitudes can be overwhelming. You end up seeing only the crushing mob of color, rather than all of the colors' sources, or even the colors themselves.

In early October, Bend was buried under an early snowfall. Eight or ten inches fell overnight, snowpeople spontaneously generated all over town, and sled tracks appeared on every hillside. So much fell in such short order that the plows couldn't keep up; a road grader trundled past my apartment, shoving thick heaps of snow towards the curb. Tents for the Fallfest downtown collapsed under the weight and ended the celebration prematurely. My parking lot never got plowed, and I was stuck in my apartment, incapable of driving up the mountains for a snowshoeing trip.

Instead, after an afternoon of experimentation with bean soup (disappointing) and cornbread (excellent) for my dinner, I went across the street for a short walk before eating. The college campus boasts an 18-hole disc golf course which winds through a copse larger than a city block. It's not quite a forest, but it's a serviceable "woods", and the multiple trails that wend through it provide ample roaming for the disc lobbers, dog walkers, trail runners, and casual strollers. You won't cover any great distance, but with wandering and a couple laps, you can easily occupy an hour or two. Having spent my first summer out here running laps through these woods after work, I know the trails very well, but the snow had transformed the area into a completely foreign territory.

With enough snow, trails vanish. Sometimes, you can still manage to pick out a familiar route by walking between the obvious trailside shrubbery, even if it is heavily cloaked in crystalline layers. For a time, I was able to navigate like that, though haltingly. Then I descended from the apex of the parcel of land into the Ponderosa forest that dominates it. Ponderosa forests have little to no ground cover. Rabbit brush, bitterbush, and some sagebrush might appear in patchy groves, but for the most part you wander alone through towering trunks that smell, upon close inspection, of vanilla. Even this wouldn't be a problem, except there are large rocks, discarded limbs (Pondys self-prune lower branches to prevent the occasional forest fires from reaching the forest canopy), and the occasional fallen tree. If you lose the path, you continue at constant risk of destroying your ankles on any number of unseen obstacles lurking beneath the snow, lying in wait for unsuspecting legs that have thrown caution to the wind in favor of speed.

I'm not wired to simply turn back and return from whence I came, to chicken out and turn tail, until I am truly lost, and this is the only hope of safety. So I continued, slowly, walking my approximate recollection of the path through the woods, as snow drifted down around me and dusk stole the light that struggled through the high branches, my boots leaving a jagged double scar as I shuffled, searching with my toes for any threats to my lower joints.

Snow on Ponderosas is always beautiful. They are majestic, often enormous trees. Their orange patchwork bark has deep, black crevices widely spaced about the circumference in mature trees, but the younger trunks are gray, with hints to the textures they will soon develop. Higher up, the green needles look much darker when contrasted with the heavy layers of fresh snow they accumulate, and the contrast was heightened by encroaching darkness. With less light, our eyes are able to perceive less color. structures in our eyes rebuild themselves nightly, giving us more rods and fewer cones, and leaving us more able to perceive peripheral movement and shade differences at the expense of our chromatic perception. The world turns to black and white, and ten thousand shades of gray in between. As I walked through the woods, constantly losing daylight, I noticed that while I had entered a vaguely tinted forest, hazy through the shifting curtains of falling snow, I soon found myself in an inkwash painted solely with grays, blacks, and whites. When the snow fell heavily, it blurred the outlines of the trees, but when it was lighter, the branches stood out with stark clarity against a gray sky promising even more snow. Between the snow on the ground and the snow in the air, sound was dampened. Though there are pockets in these woods where you can find yourself out of view of any trace of humanity, you can always hear traffic at some distance. On that night, there was far less traffic in the first place, but I found that if I wanted to hear it, I had to really try--and sometimes be patient--before I could. It was quite possible to forget that I was in the middle of town, less than half a mile in any direction from roads, houses, power lines, or people.

I spent a long time just standing in my quiet copse, relishing the silence and staring at trees, understanding for the first time why Ansel Adams worked in black and white. When you strip away all the sound and color and motion, you are left with a rawness, a more primitive view of the world, and a chance to see that many things possess a majesty and power that we might otherwise overlook while focused on all the dazzling colors.

The Swarm

2010-01-22T14:05:00.002-08:00

A few months ago, I conducted a simple experiment to see how quickly food of unknown provenance would disappear from the lobby at our office, and was frankly disappointed with the results. Today I placed a 1.75 quart container full of cookies on the same table, and it was completely emptied in under 90 minutes. This comes after a morning blessed with plaguels.

Recently I told Gretel that I work with animals (mainly due to their habits regarding treatment of tools and shared workspaces). Today I wonder if they might be closer to locusts.

Cassandra

2010-01-14T12:08:00.003-08:00

When I was still in junior high (or maybe high school), Mom paid me a compliment that made me more proud than maybe any compliment since then. I don't remember her phrasing, but it came down to my ability to read people very well on my first impression of them. If I got a bad vibe, I turned out to be right, though it may be a while before it was clear to anyone else that I was right.

The most famous instance is, of course, when I first met the succubus and screamed.

There's someone else who's always given me a bit of a weird vibe. Having known him for so long, I usually read it as meaning that he was just a weird person.

Last night I found out that he may actually be dangerous to a few of the people I care about. He's made threats against one of them, and has apparently been doing it for years.

I hate being right.

Today I became a man

2010-01-12T08:50:00.000-08:00

I skied the hell out of that bunny slope.

Resolute

2010-01-05T13:27:00.002-08:00

When the inevitable subject of New Year's resolutions came up, Gretel's mom (hahaha, that made me think of Grendel's Mother) and I both had the same response: "I don't need to make any; I'm already perfect." Fact is, I've never been too sure about the whole idea of New Year's resolutions. They seem to exist mainly as fodder for jokes about not keeping them. Everyone has seen the reports that show gym memberships have a sharp peak in January, and then immediately begin dwindling again. I sometimes wonder whether gyms are even open in October and November--is anyone still going that late in the year?

When I was much younger, my resolutions tended to be things I wanted to have happen to me. The only one I can remember now is one that I jotted in a very early journal. There was mention of getting a girlfriend, some other equally ridiculous goal, and the expected sarcastic finish, "and then I'll grow wings and fly to the moon." Strange that I was so lonely with wit like that.

I think I stopped thinking of resolutions when Mom stopped asking what mine would be. In the past few years, I've thought about them again, but only as an abstract concept, not something on my to-do list. Namely, why make them on New Year's Eve? Spring is when the earth renews itself--why not make resolutions in the springtime? For that matter, why not make them on your birthday, when you officially start a new year, rather than when the calendar starts a new year? Why only make them once a year? Despite my professions of perfection, I try to make improvements--even if only in the "continuing and preventative maintenance" sense--whenever I can. I run, bike, and climb mainly because I like to, but partly because I want to take care of myself and stay healthy. Some time last year I decided to start trying three new recipes a month to force myself to explore my cookbooks a little further and broaden my culinary repertoire. When I decided to start making all my own bread (an enterprise which eventually met its frustrated end), it started as a challenge to myself, but in the springtime, not over a champagne toast while humming Auld Lang Syne.

Maybe people announce it on New Year's Eve to make it public, in the hopes that scrutiny will force us to follow through on lofty goals of "losing forty pounds" or "learning Mandarin" or dropping some illicit habit. But scrutiny only works if it's applied, and 98% of the time, nobody cares about your resolutions. They're too busy ignoring their own.

If you really want to improve yourself, do it. The timing doesn't matter. The goal matters, and setting a clear path to attain it will get you further than proclaiming it as Dick Clark staggers his way through another year-closing midnight.

Duck you

2009-12-11T10:39:00.003-08:00

I gave it some thought, and I've determined that it's definitely the Wren's fault.

Sure, it started innocently enough. She sent me a box full of randomness, as she sometimes does, which included a small plastic duck. It was white, and entirely innocent, until you rubbed its belly, and then it became a tie-dyed light show for the next several seconds. She sent it to me because she is well aware of my fascination with shiny objects and gadgetry, and a duck packed full of LEDs fills both of those niches.

Then, like an idiot, I shared my joy by showing my brightly blinking ducks to other people.

Lady Grey gave me a duck keychain for Christmas that shines a light and quacks when you push his button.

Mum gave me a black rubber duck with devil horns and boobs (the jury's still out on whether that's cute or creepy).

Frack gave me another duck which lights when you rub its belly, and is planning on giving me another duck for Christmas. She gets upset if she thinks anyone else gets a duck from me (she is under the mistaken impression that her own keychain duck, the twin of mine, was a gift from me, when it actually game from her grandmother, Lady Grey), so I plan to give ducks to her sister and cousins for Christmas just to mess with her.

When my brother visited, he brought me a rubber duck with witch's hat and broom AND a shower curtain decorated with pictures of MORE rubber ducks.

Anyone who looks at that shelf on my desk would naturally assume that I have some sort of ducking fixation, rather than a bunch of completely random duck buddies. True, I've long had a goal of filling Mum's garden pond shore-to shore with rubber ducks, but that's just funny, not a symptom of being ducking nuts. Now, though, instead of her pond filling with various odd ducks, my desk is.

All because the Wren gave me a blinking toy.

John Quite Public

2009-12-01T11:35:00.002-08:00

People who take magazines to the bathroom perplex me. When I go in there, I have a very specific task in mind, and I enter with plans to execute said task then vacate the premises immediately after, especially in a public restroom. I have no need to hang out any longer than absolutely necessary to finish the article on Aniston's new beau or the fascinating adaptive qualities of the Himalayan flatworm. Yet there is often far more entertainment to be found there than anyone should admit.

Admit it. You've taken the extra moment to read a soliloquy scrawled on the stall wall. You have read the number offering a good time, even though you may have no intention of ever calling it. Part of this is because, given the opportunity, many people will read almost anything to pass a couple moments, and you've proven that point by getting to the second paragraph of this borderline scatological post.

Twice in college a few of us were granted glimpses into a mysterious and foreign land: the women's restroom. The first time it was early in the morning, before class started, and in the midst of a mocking discussion on the topic (don't ask how we got started--I don't remember), one of the girls said, "here, I'll show you," and we followed with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm. She pushed wide the door and stunned us with the revelation beyond. While the guy's restroom was a simple utilitarian affair equipped with the necessary plumbing, barely adequate light, and a dirty mirror, the female equivalent was a suite of rooms. The first door revealed to us only--in appearance--an antechamber with couches and lamps, while also showing us--in truth--the reason they take so long in there. Any woman who ever rests upon those couches has no reason to complain about long lines in the women's restroom. If they were like guys and used rooms barely sufficient for the necessary evacuation processes, they would have no compulsion to stay and socialize (this also raises a host of questions about traveling in groups). A couple years later, much fanfare accompanied the grand opening of a women's restroom on the sixth floor of one of the engineering buildings. Our thermo class was offered a tour. There were approximately 8-10 times more males in the class than females. The restroom was a scented cacophony of pink frilliness. I felt like I had fallen into a Bath and Body Works themed nightmare, and the greatest terror available to me at the time was that I might not wake. There were fluffy pink toilet seat covers, fluffy pink bath mats, ornamental pink curtain-things, and a goddamned bowl of scented seashell-shaped soaps that were never meant to be used for actual cleansing. My tuition dollars at work.

Pink fluffy things are not the only creeping horror to be found in public restrooms, as anyone who has used one in a park anywhere can attest, but I'm not just talking about eye-watering stenches, clouds of flies, or discarded love balloons. Even in facilities featuring actual plumbing and semi-annual cleanings, there are people who answer the cellphone. As if that's not bad enough, they usually announce, to the caller and anyone else in earshot (it is a common fact that cellphones reduce hearing ability, causing people to bellow everything while using them) exactly where they are and what they are doing.

Finally, there is the unintentional humor. The Portland International Airport uses water-saving toilets with handy instructional placards: "push up for Number 1 (liquid waste), push down for Number 2 (solid waste)". I wanted to show Dad, but the lighting was poor and the picture I took of the sign on the inside surface of the stall door was blurry and indistinct--and there was no way I was going to turn on the flash, lest someone else see the light and think I was way too proud of what I had done. The last time I passed through PDX, I was taking my brief respite, luxuriating in the space that only an airplane lavatory can really make you appreciate when I heard hurried steps and a slammed door beside me, soon followed by the sort of thunderous applause that is only amplified by tile floors and closely-spaced metal walls. Great bursts of flatulence rattled the man's cheeks mercilessly, and while some small part of me felt pity for him--while some men take great pride in such outbursts, others would rather not use such a method to announce their intestinal discomfort to the entire terminal--the rest of me screamed "Code Red! CODE RED!!" inside the confines of my skull, then amended it to "CODE BROWN!! EVAC! EVAC!" before hurrying out, hoping only to make it all the way to the hallway before laughter overtook me.

Heart of Darkness: Spoils

2009-11-30T13:36:00.004-08:00

"Your assistant has some mouth on her," I said, not knowing or caring that the succubus was in earshot. We had spent the morning (and previous afternoon) collecting and mulching the leaves in Cookie Aunt's yard, and we were packing the equipment in the truck to go do the same for Pie Aunt. I don't remember what prompted the outburst from the Vile One, but it had just insisted that my brother do something himself rather than perform the task itself. My response was as close as I could come to saying, "your wife's a spoiled, lazy bitch, and I hate her" and still have everyone believe that I was making a joke. It is often useful to be a creature of dry humor and casual, sarcastic understatement.

"You guys baby him all the time!! Let him do things himself!" it gawped, contrary to immutable Facts of the Universe and all evidence to the contrary. "Why did you carry two of those over here?" it added, waving a pudgy hand and generous ripples of arm fat at the sheets of OSB (it's like plywood--we used it to contain the high-velocity mulch produced by Dad's newest power toy) I set down beside the truck. I still don't know whether this was an example of "babying" my brother or a second, unrelated yet equally pointless tirade.

"Baby him??" I asked, holding the sheets upright until it waddled far enough from the truck to allow me room to load them in its bed. "What are you talking about?!" My brother had just arrived with the third sheet of OSB, and I turned to him for corroboration. "Have I ever been nice to you?" I asked, and received an immediate "no" accompanied with the customary head motion. He has his shortcomings, but he occasionally plays a good straight man.

The conversation ended there, perhaps because the shock of his contradicting anything it commanded shocked the beast into silence, but I've been wondering about it ever since. (and lest you think better of the succubus because it was helping to do yard work, please remember that you can't so much as drop by Cookie Aunt's house for a few minutes without being offered some sort of food. eight hours of yard work guarantees two delicious meals, and cookies or dessert bars throughout. Motivations of the foul creature were entirely self-serving, and ironic. Dad, Lady Grey, Cookie Aunt and others have spent untold hours in the Sisyphean task of repairing my brother's house and have never been offered so much as a sandwich.) What brought on the outburst in the first place? More interesting would be any possible examples of how we "baby" my brother. Dad's tireless efforts to help fix their house? Lady Grey inviting them (thanklessly) for delicious, home-cooked meals? Cookie Aunt offering to help them with anything they need, even if only to fill her time in her current unemployed need to serve some larger purpose than feeding her cats? Me... no, it can't be me.

Perhaps, and this has occurred to me only as I type this unregarded essay, it is some darker jealousy. Dad bought my brother a plane ticket to Oregon so he could join in my hosting of Dad and Lady Grey's second visit (It was in October, but I haven't posted anything else about it yet). While he was here, the two of them bought him a new pair of hiking boots after his other, truly ancient pair actually fell apart. They labeled it a birthday present. Between the three of us, we paid for all of his food and drink, and except for the night he cooked and the rare instances of eating out, I prepared dinners, lunches, and even a few hot breakfasts for the duration of their visit. I suppose this might have been "babying" him, but the bulk of that was being a good host, and the rest was our collective pity for the poor bastard. Even before he lost his job, he made comments to Cookie Aunt that made her wonder whether he got enough to eat (specifically, eating PBJ because he could no longer afford lunch meat). The succubus never cooks, so when my brother returns from work, he has to cook dinner or buy it dinner somewhere. The first is no treat when you've been busting your balls all day, and anybody who can't afford to pack a real lunch has no business with the second. Were we "babying" him by allowing him to eat normal, healthy meals? Does going shopping with his money on Black Friday and going out on a regular basis while he collects unemployment help to counter such pampering? Are the greedy habits we despise so much in the succubus actually an altruistic effort to prevent him from getting soft by forcing him to work even harder?

Or maybe my original theory is right, and it will put him in an early grave as it overextends him in an untiring effort to treat itself to the finer side of life at his expense. Perhaps it was incensed with jealousy that he was treated so well and it was not afforded the same small luxuries provided in the trip to Oregon.

There is something even more unsettling to me than the possible jealousy of a self-serving, soul-sucking bitch, and that is the potential. Namely, what other lies has it developed about our family? And how many has he come to believe?

Talk Nerdy To Me

2009-11-15T14:00:00.000-08:00

Consider this a public service announcement, for the betterment of all mankind.

Ladies, find yourself a nerd. It is a guaranteed path to happiness. I should know: I not only speak for nerds, I am one.

Let's take a look at the facts. Nerds tend to grow up lonely and isolated. Most of them spend the bulk of their time (especially in youth) buried in books, immersed in video games, or working with computers. This means that there is a high likelihood that they will grow up to be well-spoken, with tireless, nimble digits and high earning potential. Granted, some of them may require some direction and guidance to apply these skills properly, but let's be honest; no matter how perfect any guy may be, most women will still seek to change him, so it's not like you're not prepared for the task.

There have been other articles written extolling the virtues of snaring a nerd for very practical reasons: they can fix things, they know how to configure a wireless network for you, they have bitchin' stereos, and they can calculate tips in their head. The time has come, I think, to address some of the other benefits of bagging (or bedding) a nerd. The subtler benefits, if you will. Perhaps even the more intimate benefits. And oddly enough, many of these benefits stem from the same traits that initially made these misunderstood creatures so unlovable in the first place.

Many nerds are also Mama's Boys. This can have drawbacks, especially if the apron strings are cinched so tightly around his neck that it has begun to affect his thinking, but the healthier moms generally keep trying to get their sons out in the world, despite their own desire to keep them near to heart. How does this help you? Your nerd will have an insight into the female mind uncommon in other men, even though he may not realize it himself. He will most likely be be very polite, hold doors open (this will also stem from countless books and movies about gallant knights, and an unyielding terror of ever angering you), and know how to laundry. If you're very lucky, he will also be an accomplished cook.

Nerds grow up as pariahs. If your nerd is a band nerd, this will not be as pronounced, as band nerds travel in packs for safety, think that they are in a "clique," and may actually believe that they are cool. Non-band nerds were without hope in high school. We had, at most, half a dozen good friends, and usually four to six of them had better friends with whom they preferred to spend their time. This is to say nothing of girls. In high school, nerds are visible to girls only when the girls want something from them. Usually homework answers, which we happily provided, because a) we got to talk to a girl without the usual looks of revulsion and abrupt partings when someone--anyone--else walked past, and b) it was our only chance to feel superior to anyone. There is an excellent chance that no female unrelated to your nerd has ever had any sort of non-accidental physical contact with him. Use your powers wisely. For a completely inexperienced nerd, putting your hand on his thigh and breathing in his ear may kill him, but I assure you that he will die happy. After a lifetime of physical contact with others limited to beatings received and grandma hugs, one would think that nerds would have no idea of how to have contact with another human being, but only if one forgot that nerds watch a lot of tv, and some of them read some really weird shit. They seek only an outlet. It may not be easy, because many nerds have pretty serious personal boundary issues (they will actually bristle when a football player enters the room, even if they have not yet seen the football player. It is entirely instinctive survival behavior), but in time you will find that once provided an outlet, and some gentle encouragement, your nerd will be happy to touch you in any way you like, and even a brush of your hand on his shoulder will be enough to keep him happy for days.

Nerds are the undisputed kings of the world of games. Not sports. Games. D&D, Go, chess, and anything on a computer. Although this can sometimes be a drawback, and can also lead to a competitive streak (I am no longer invited to play 30 Words Or Less at my family gatherings not because I gloat, but because if I am playing, everyone knows who will win. It's not even fun for me anymore.), it also provides two clear advantages. First, after memorizing rules for dozens of games, nerds have very clear pathways laid out for processes. If you make it clear that certain things are always or never to be done, they will never, ever forget it, and never stray from that until instructed otherwise. Second, they are excellent problem solvers, and will likely be able to talk you out of a mess or into a club before the other parties know what has happened. This is a skill which has served them well in avoiding physical confrontations throughout their entire lives.

Speaking of physical confrontations, despite our own exacting knowledge of our scrawny, bony structures, every single nerd alive secretly wants to be the super spy, the knight in shining armor, the whip-cracking, fedora-wearing archaeologist, or all three. If any confrontation or threat to your safety should ever come to blows, he will steadfastly defend you with all his might, even if he knows from the start that he may not be able to walk or eat more than soup for months afterwards. In his mind, as long as he is taking the beating instead of you or your honor, he is Hercules, he is Indy, he is Lancelot, and he is James Fucking Bond, no matter how high-pitched his squeals for mercy may get. Treasure your hero, and treat him well, for there is every likelihood that should he ever have to, he would die for you.

Every nerd goes through a magic phase. Many of us are still in it. Prestidigitation trains the fingers well, ladies. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Finally, nerds spend the bulk of their lives being ignored by the fairer sex. Be careful of paying them attention, because they have nothing in their lives to prepare them for the experience of someone flirting with them, and they usually assume it is some sort of mistake. Nerds have no idea of how to respond to it. It is strange and foreign to them, and it may take you several attempts to convince them that your interest and efforts are genuine. However, once you have won the heart of a nerd, he will be so smitten that he will remain forever loyal, because the most attractive thing any woman can do to a nerd is be attracted to him and show him some attention. It may be strange and exotic for a nerd to realize that a female of the species is showing true interest in him, but they feed on sci-fi. Strangeness is their lifeblood. Even an average-looking girl is beautiful to the nerd who loves her, and while nothing feeds his ego like your interest, nothing will feed yours like the adoration in his eyes.

I could list good reasons for days, but it all comes back to this: Ladies, get yourself a nerd. If you have one, remind him frequently of how much you appreciate him. If you've been burned in the past by jock types, no salve is as healing as a nerd's devotion. But once you have your nerd, do not exploit him or take him for granted, for while hell may have no fury like a woman scorned, nerds know dozens of ways to eliminate someone while leaving no evidence at all. Find your nerd, treat him well, and I promise that you will never regret it.

Ladies, you're welcome.
Fellow nerds, you are very welcome.

dancing fool

2009-11-13T10:06:00.004-08:00

It is possible that she sees it as a flaw; some aspect of my personality or behavior that she thinks can be corrected through time and unwavering dedication. However, I see it as the simple, brutally ugly truth. I have presented it in the past as a joke ("I'm a white dude. What do you expect?" "I'm an engineer. Of course I'm moving mechanically." "I will never be drunk enough to do that."), but that is because I present damn near everything as a joke, especially those topics that may make me slightly uncomfortable.

This is not to say that the topic of dancing makes me uncomfortable, but the act of dancing, or the thought of me dancing, does little to put me at ease. She, being a hot girl, has a natural interest and proclivity for it. She, like many hot girls, could have a seizure and make it look good. I, on the other hand, could put forth my absolute best effort and it would look like a vertical coma patient... having a seizure.

In grade school gym class, they made us square dance. Hated it. Granted, at the time, it may have had something to do with having forced contact with grade-school girls, who are notoriously fraught with cooties. There were health concerns at stake, ignored with wanton disregard by the school administrators.

In junior high and high school, there were regular "dances" hosted by the school and characterized by music at a volume to prevent any conversation that was not screamed directly into the ear of the person next to you, teachers and the principal looking bored by the entrance as they half-heartedly made sure nobody was having sex or a knife fight, and tight knots of students clustered at the edges of the room, making every effort to have zero contact with the terrifying opposite sex. There were also a few stoners, cheerleaders, and the occasional jock flopping about or gyrating as thought their lives depended on it. I stopped going after two or three. None of those people wanted anything to do with me during the day unless they though I could explain what the teacher was trying to tell us. Why should that change after sundown? It was never fun for me--it was just the same teenage nerd awkwardness with poorer lighting. Sure, I felt like a social failure, but I always had that going for me, so why not stay home, watch Star Trek, and be happy, rather than have that failure forcibly displayed?

In college I didn't go to parties. Lack of invitation was a large part of it, but there were other factors. I hate tobacco smoke. I hated arriving with a group of friends and watching as frat boys took away all the girls and rushed the guys, and I was once again standing alone in a house packed with drunks and ear-splitting music I didn't like. The state didn't pass laws against smoking in bars until long after I was out of college, so I was never exposed to the dancing there.

Socially, dancing was never an option for me. The technical aspects have always eluded me as well. I was never in band (when the school started culling students for band, I tested very well on all four of the instruments they had us try, but was convinced that Boy Scouts would take too much of my time, and I wouldn't be able to do both. Yeah, I've always been a big winner socially. Too dorky to be a band dork.), so terms like "four-four time," and "listen for the down beat" mean nothing to me at all. Bullshit advice like "just move with the music" is useless without some idea of what the hell the music is doing, and it's worse when you've never heard the song before. How the hell am I supposed to know what the music is going to do? What the hell is that even supposed to mean??

She's obsessed with all the various dance shows on TV now. I mock her infatuation with reality television, a medium which certainly has its very own level of hell, though how they would tell the difference between it and their corner of the living world, I couldn't guess. "You're not going to try to force me to go to the ballet, are you?" "Don't you want to be able to say you went?" "No. I have no interest in going, and thus no interest in bragging about going." I've never felt drawn to activities which seem to exist only so that people who frequent them can believe that they sound better and more cultured by virtue of having experienced them. "Well, if you're really not interested..." "I'm not." "Still, I'd like you to go with me." "What part of 'You're not going to try to force me to go' didn't you hear?" She then proceeded to try to guilt me into attending this theoretical performance by expressing remorse that she would have to go alone, as though she didn't have other friends who actually have an interest in dance.

I can't do it. I don't understand it. I know that there are some dances that are supposed to illustrate some idea or tell a story, but without reading what the idea or story is, I'd never decode the waving arms, rolling heads, and high kicks to mean "there was a bad harvest, and the village died of botulism from tainted canned goods" or "I am a frustrated artist who is not nearly so talented as my mother and I like to think." Actually, I could probably get that second one, but it may not be the message they intended to transmit.

Much as the women of the world would like to deny it, there are those of us (and yes, they're mostly white guys of a technical nature) who simply can't dance. Get over it. Sure, there are times when I wish that I could. Times when I watch friends bouncing with abandon, obviously enjoying themselves for reasons not entirely due to their alcohol consumption, or when I see her, spinning, stepping, and smiling, thrilled to be moving "with the music." I'm glad my friends can enjoy it. It makes me happy to see her dancing, but it's thickly bittersweet, because I see her having fun, and spend that time sitting quietly at a table well off the floor knowing that it's something I can't have. I don't feel happy dancing--I feel awkward, out of place, and frustrated. Inevitably, whenever I try, someone will tell me to "loosen up," and "move with the music," thus proving that the common mantra "anyone can do it" isn't true, because as I jerk and sway, doing my damnedest to move with the fucking music, someone finds it necessary to remind me that I'm doing it wrong. I've even had someone who dances for a living laugh at my incapacity for the form. I have been professionally certified as being incapable of dancing. So stop telling me otherwise. I know better.

Have a Nice Day

2009-10-13T07:53:00.002-07:00

Yesterday was fraught with minor frustrations. As is usually the case, by the end of the day, even a minor frustration (especially a regularly recurring minor frustration) was enough to make me want to throw breakable things at other breakable things, erupt in fits of profanity, and slap people in the face. I managed to limit myself to only one of those options; I'll let you decide for yourself which one it was.

Yet they were only minor frustrations, and while I was a little bent out of shape by the time I got back to my apartment and started the well-overdue double load of laundry, I was calming down. Sedate, if not happy. It wasn't until I recounted my day to Gretel that I realized the day's petty tribulations were uncontested. "Didn't anything good happen to you today?" she asked, after hearing of my litany of minor grievances. That's when I realized that nothing had, and started laughing for a solid minute.

Then I got some chips and salsa and watched Castle. Problem solved.

British Agitation

2009-09-28T16:46:00.002-07:00

As someone born and raised here in the states, I'm actually in the minority in my office. We have an Israeli, a Pole, an Irishman, a Scot, and several Englishmen. There are a couple other Americans, but we're vastly outnumbered. (And even one of those spent a year or so at Oxford) I deal with these guys every day, but it wasn't until my extended stay in California's Armpit that I really began to notice the common theme among the English (hereafter, the Brits): they're a bunch of whiny bitches.

Over a year ago, Shruk spent a week or two here in Oregon, and didn't return to his home post in York until I was about halfway through my own visit there. Upon questioning by his colleagues of how he liked my fair city, he launched into a tirade of how he got sick of all the "fake niceness" he encountered. It is possible that this is strictly a cultural thing; in England, tipping isn't as customary as it is here, and frankly, acts that we might consider rudeness or coldness are just the way they operate. When Brits come over to our side of the pond, they are suddenly confronted with smiling, cheery people, eager to please and receive their 15%. I think it freaks them out. But it didn't stop me from being annoyed and, yes, a bit offended, because while I've encountered plenty of false friendliness, I've found none of it here in Bend. People here really are nice, and given that they live in what WankerBitch describes as "Paradise," you can hardly blame them. It's possible that my own viewpoint is skewed by the same effect; living in a place that suffuses you with joy rather than suspicion and mild paranoia can have a euphoric effect, but as I just mentioned, it gets everyone here. It really just a nice place to be.

And Shruk really is just a big whiny dickhead, so I ignored it.

Until I spent weeks in Milpitas going out with co-workers, driving them back to the hotel, and listening to them bitch, whine, and complain about every damn thing they could. They give distances in miles and order pints of beer and bitch that we're not on the metric system. They complain about our electrical grid, television service, and the power available in our cars, then talk about the tiny coupe that they drive in England. The food isn't good enough, the servers aren't helpful enough, the (perfectly acceptable) water is bad, and the list never stops. Nothing seems to be good enough for them, but everything back home was just wonderful.

Then frakking go back, you whiny bitches. We don't need your buzzkill here. I'm too busy enjoying paradise to listen to you tell me how awful it is.

An Open Letter to Motorists

2009-09-25T11:09:00.002-07:00

Dear Driving People,

You might remember me from your drive to work this morning, or maybe your drive home last night. I was the guy on the eleven-year-old Trek mountain bike, wearing a white helmet and a bright yellow messenger bag. I'm pretty much impossible to miss. Bright colors, reflective surfaces on the bike, bag, and my coat (if you saw me in the morning), and I very obediently follow all laws and regulations, though usually from the bike lane.

I think that might be part of the problem we have. Do you realize that I'm following all the same laws as motor vehicles? Sure, I occasionally try to break the speed limit, but let's face it--you do that a whole lot more than I do--and I usually take advantage of the "Idaho stop," but Oregon is looking at passing that into law anyway. Everything else is by the book. I wait at red lights with you, signal all my turns and lane changes (more than many of you can say), and yield to pedestrians, no matter how much I may want to slip quietly past and use them to hold you back, giving me free reign of the street for a moment longer.

Granted, there are a lot of people out there who flaunt a callous disregard for safety and the law. I promise you that when I see bikers cutting haphazardly across lanes, ignoring traffic signals, riding down the wrong side of the street (or the sidewalk, or down the middle of the street, or the wrong direction in the bike lane), it infuriates me far more than it bothers you. To you, they're a petty inconvenience, but to me, they're a thick black mark on my reputation. They are the reason you hate me.

I'm sure that in the minds of most Driving People, I am just another biker horning in on their pavement and getting in their way. In Cleveland, this was a capital offense punishable by screaming, thrown objects, terrifyingly close misses, and summary execution. Bend is generally a very bike-friendly town. If a street doesn't have a bike lane, it's probably not busy enough to warrant one. There are even sensors in many of these bike lanes so we can trip the lights when there are no cars present (a major pet peeve of mine in all other intersections). The truth of the matter is that in town, I am even more like a car than I am on longer rides outside the city. I can pedal at or near the speed limit in most areas, and if I don't have to stop when entering a traffic circle, I can get through it--no matter which direction I'm going--faster than almost any car.

Thus the reason for this missive.

I'm moving a lot faster than you think I am. Preserving that momentum means I can get out of your way faster, too, and that's something we both want. I'm probably a lot closer than you realize. When you speed up to pass me just to turn right in front of me, I have to hit the brakes to keep from leaving a face-shaped dent in your passenger's door. On one occasion a few months ago, I was going over thirty MPH when this happened, and though I managed to preserve my Radio Face, I did slam into the side of an SUV. They didn't notice, and kept driving. If I'm in a bike lane going straight and you pass me to make your right turn ten feet ahead of me, you're stealing my right-of-way. I always look for turn signals when I'm approaching an intersection, and I'll stay behind cars I know are going to turn to avoid this and make it easier for everyone. If you don't signal until during or after your turn, you're a douchebag, and I hope rabid, angry gophers find themselves trapped in your pants and decide to chew their way out through your body. To the guy int he red truck who thus cut me off last night, I didn't notice that your window was down until after I yelled at you, but I don't regret it, and I hope you heard me.

However, there are a few bright points out there. The lady yesterday morning who waved me through the underpass ahead of her and patiently slowed down (even though I pushed it to 32 mph in gratitude) until I was clear, holding other traffic behind her, is awesome. The two people who needed to turn left from an oncoming lane and waited for me to puff up the steep hill where I live, even though they had the time to turn in front of me, mad me happy for the rest of the afternoon. There was even a girl turning right into a college parking lot who stopped, looked over her shoulder, and waited for me to pass her before turning. I would buy all of you lunch if I could. For each jackass driver out there who seems hell-bent on putting me as far behind them as possible, even if it means bouncing me off their fender, there is someone else who will happily give me a right-of-way I may not deserve, or a common human courtesy that seems incomprehensible to many other drivers. I am, after all, only a biker, and therefore undeserving of such treatment usually reserved for equals in cars.

Now, if I can discern between asshole drivers and Decent People, certainly you can distinguish between me and asshole bikers? Even if you can't, at least recognize that it's our road, too. If you can't share it, don't use it.

Sincerely,
The Guy with the Yellow Messenger Bag

Temptation

2009-09-16T08:44:00.002-07:00

She caught my eye the moment I stepped through the door. Pale, sleek, beautiful, with a slim, athletic build that always gets my attention. Of course I wanted her.

She leaned casually on the bar with some others. I knew just by looking that I could pick her up easily, that she'd be a great ride, and everything we did together would be fast, furious, and amazing. Her performance would surely put to shame my current match.

Plus, she was on sale.

It was very hard to convince myself I didn't need another bike, but oh, how I wanted it.

Purgatory Has No Sidewalks

2009-09-05T11:00:00.002-07:00

For four of the past five weeks, I was in Milpitas, California for work.

I was miserable.

Not for reasons you might suspect.

I have never in my life been homesick. Mom wondered about it the first time I went to camp with my scout troop. Nothing. Costa Rica for a week? Nope. Gone to college? Zip. Road trip out west? Trip to France? Moving to Oregon? Nada. Don't get me wrong--I miss people. Friends, family, Gretel--but I'm still happy wherever I am. It's not a matter of some persistent longing to return to more familiar surroundings. I love to travel and see new things, try new foods, meet new people, and bring back pictures and stories with all the associated bragging rights. I even enjoy airports, though they may sometimes try even my own supernatural patience. I was not miserable with homesickness.

I love my job. Yes, it is sometimes trying, and I occasionally get frustrated or bored out of my skull, but for the most part, it's pretty great; people hand me problems, and I get to solve them. I may never be acknowledged as the problem solver, but I know I'm doing a good job, and sometimes I get to see the fruits of my labors see fruition. I spend lots of time talking to welders, machinists, and crazy smart physicists, and I learn neat stuff from all of them. Sometimes, I get compliments on my drawings, and I am secretly far more pleased than I let on, because in my heart of hearts I am a fucking artist, and when I generate a model with some very clever parametrics or a drawing that defies geometry to display all necessary information in a clear, concise manner, it makes me happy enough to wish that someone appreciates it as much as I do. While I was in California's Armpit, I got to actually build all the things that I had been drawing for months, I got to solve brand new problems, and every time my design got punched, I rolled with it and found a way to correct whatever had gone wrong. Drawing on the computer is nice, but the really fun part of my job is making something real and being able to see something tangible at the end of the day that actually does what it's supposed to do. Whether that's a laser fixture, a fully functioning tool, or the crate it ships in doesn't matter. Despite the difficulties in any job, that's not why I was miserable.

I didn't hate being away from Oregon. I didn't hate what I was doing there. I didn't even mind 12-14 hour days in the office building. I hated the place itself. I hated that the only place I could run was the mall parking lot. Milpitas is full of broad, busy roads, and remarkably few sidewalks. There are no parks or trails. The only trees are decorative accents for the parking lots and buildings. The waterways are drainage ditches and flood control canals. It is the very worst kind of city. It could only be made worse by persistent thick pollution, and if it were a more traditional industrial city instead of a sector of Silicon Valley, it would have that, too.

I hated that it had none of the things I need to make me happy. Yes, part of that was job related. Barring the presence of trees, mountains, rocks, and rivers, I can get by for remarkably long periods with a chance to find some solitude and do what I want to do, whatever that might be. Instead, I was subject to the whims of my co-workers, who mainly wanted to drink. There were not enough rental cars for them to do their thing and me to do mine, and the only place within walking distance of our hotel was a mall so large that it was divided into five neighborhoods. I worked with them all day, went to dinner with them immediately after, and usually got back so late that all I could do was stumble through a shower and fall asleep.

I couldn't run unless I got up long before breakfast. I couldn't just sit back and watch TV or read or do a crossword. Often, I would volunteer to be the designated driver mainly so I could have the best seat in the car. I savored memories of those trips in the morning when Shruk drove to work because it was the only thing that kept my life from flashing before my eyes for the entire trip. Trust me, you can only watch that show so many times before you start dreading that instead of reruns, you'll get an epilogue and end credits.

Luckily, I was offered a quick recovery after my return. Several co-workers asked whether I was looking forward to getting back to Oregon. "Gretel is visiting this weekend," I told them. "I'm looking forward to that."

stay within what lines?

2009-08-28T13:55:00.002-07:00

Last night after work we went to a restaurant/brewery for dinner. It was Shruk's birthday, and to celebrate, he drank his way through Big Damn Mugs of all of their house brews (ten or eleven total, and the mug was a solid 22 or 25 ounces). My boss likes drinking more than I do, so I had a small stout followed by a Coke and a glass of water while everyone else drank themselves into oblivion.

On the way in, I saw that they had crayons for kids. When we sat down, I saw paper on the tables. I was halfway done drawing an elaborately decorated cake by the time the appetizers arrived, and by the time our waitress went home and we moved into the bar area, I had also drawn a man with a TV for a head (the TV was displaying a horse's head), a tapped keg, an enormous strawberry with man-faced worm, and a frog (whose eye was the dark circle left by my beer glass) watching a butterfly.

We're going to an Irish bar tonight. I'll probably be driving again.

So long as they have crayons, I don't care.

If at first you don't succeed, you're probably screwed. (updated)

2009-08-26T18:56:00.003-07:00

This project really began six or eight months ago as a sky-pie dream of our business unit manager. They asked me to make some renderings of what the finished product might look like from the outside. Later, they had me develop a fairly complete solid model so we could look inside it as well. Concepts of how to build the product changed. I adjusted my model accordingly. I was told how to design the frame and panels. I complied.

Four or five months ago I was sent in search of local manufacturers to build parts for a prototype in our own shop. It's ugly as hell, but it functions, pretty much.

Then I was sent in search of other suppliers to do a better job.

Four weeks ago they sent me to the company headquarters to start building two Alpha tools. I spent two weeks running back and forth between the loading dock, Incoming Inspection, Stores, Document Control, the boss's pseudo-office, and the model shop where my computer sat on a sad little table never meant to be used as a desk, as I made heroic efforts to make the model look like the bill of materials while simultaneously making up the bill of materials, updated drawings, and harangued various other people to get me the parts I so desperately needed so I could actually build something.

Last week I was back in Oregon.

This week I returned to Milpitas (dubbed Pit Ass by Gretel and Millipedes by WankerBitch) to discover that much of what I had bolted own earlier had been removed by Shruk, our large, surly, British, Technical Product Service Something Or Other. Granted, he had to remove some of it to get the tool aligned properly, but he never speaks without bitching about some damn thing. Both of my frame designs (made to someone else's specs and suggestions), my panel designs (ditto), and a flat shutter (admittedly my own design, and I discovered the problem) have all been deemed crummy. About an hour ago, we discovered that it may actually be impossible to align the robot half to the tool half. Yesterday I spent two hours with a set of files, lovingly grinding away cubic inches of aluminum and steel just to make the two halves fit together (that was actually due to a manufacturing error, not my own work), and now it looks like it was for naught anyway. I can't entirely blame the manufacturer--the precision we require is not easy to produce on a welded frame--but it eats at me that I get to shoulder the blame when the welded frame wasn't even my idea. I just drew someone else's idea. We're out of time to change things dramatically; these tools ship next month (one was supposed to ship Friday, but we pushed it back a week this afternoon).

This project was exciting when we were developing it and tweaking the design, but we've been pushed into releasing it without a proper product development cycle, and the testing is happening as we build it--we hardly have time for a regimen that is cursory, much less rigorous. We'll get them out in time, but it's not working wonders for my esteem as an engineer.

Last night I found out that they solved the leveling problem; Shruk apparently didn't know that the last item that was off-level had the capacity to level independent of its mounting plate. He didn't bother telling me that, of course--my boss did. Shruk never passes on good news. Ass.

A Toast to the New Couple

2009-08-24T17:35:00.003-07:00

Three weeks ago, I got to attend the wedding of a good friend from college. I had heard, through various conversations, phone calls, and emails, the living history of the relationship almost from its onset, so I was thrilled for her when he proposed, and actually eager to see the wedding, though they are not, as a rule, My Thing. Though I can rock out a suit, I don't really like to dress formally, and in large, mob-like social situations, I sometimes react like an over excited puppy, either by peeing on the floor or hiding under the table. Neither is usually welcomed at such events, but this was the California Roll and her Frosty, and she assured me that dress was "island chic." I don't know what "chic" is, except that it's never been me, but I figured if I managed to keep my shirt buttoned and tucked in, I'd be ok.

I may elaborate on the weekend's activities later. Right now I'd rather say something that I never got to say to the people I felt should hear it. Hopefully enough of them will find it here that I can be excused for missing my chance during the festivities. My only excuse is that I didn't know I wouldn't get the chance until it was already gone, although I had been planning my words for weeks, maybe even months, beforehand. Here goes:

"I'd like to make a toast. Really, I just want to tell a funny story about California Roll. Not the rafting story. Ask me later if you haven't heard that one yet. This story took place many, many years ago, during a late-night study break in a dorm on our college campus. I came over to visit California Roll in her building, and she started telling me about her Ideal Guy.

"It was one of those eerily detailed descriptions you sometimes get from girls who have been planning their wedding day since childhood. They know the colors, the flowers, the ring, the cake, everything except the guy. Her description wasn't about her wedding, but about the guy she wanted to have next to her on that day.

"She started by telling me what he looked like. How tall he was, the color of his hair and eyes. She told me what he would do for a living, and the sort of things he'd say and do not to impress her, but because it was in his nature to say and do those things."

(Take a sip from the glass, pause for a moment.)

"A few years later, she returned to Cleveland from grad school for a weekend, and gathered several of her friends in a Mexican restaurant near campus to drink margaritas, eat some food, drink margaritas, catch up with each other, and see if they had any margaritas left. Because she's California Roll, she left dinner for a little while to go get a pizza. I walked with her into Little Italy to get a better chance to hear what she was up to, and she started telling me about this guy she'd met.

"She started by telling me what he looked like. How tall he was, and the color of his hair and eyes. She told me what he was studying to do for a living, and the sort of things he said and did not to impress her, but because it was in his nature to say and do those things.

"She had barely started her description when I recognized him. I hadn't met Frosty yet--that happened a couple years later in San Francisco--but I realized that it was the same description, almost word-for-word, that she had given me years earlier, during a late-night study break in a dorm on our college campus.

"Frosty, California Roll--here's to getting what you always wanted. May your life together be so long, happy, and healthy that it will annoy the crap out of anyone who has to hear about it."

Congratulations, guys.

Cable TV

2009-08-24T16:53:00.003-07:00

I spent the first two weeks of this month in Milpitas (City motto: "California's Armpit") on business. Saying it was "on business" rather than "for work" makes it sound more important and flashy than it really was. I like to think I was working off some of the time I will inevitably spend in Purgatory, should my belief system ever include such a place.

There are few advantages to business travel. Chief among them is the expense account: you don't pay for anything you eat in that period, and while it sounds like a lot of fun at the outset, eating out three meals a day for two weeks gets old around Day Four, especially when all your choices have to coincide with eating habits of your co-workers, the same people who are incapable of figuring out how to order three pizzas to the mutual satisfaction of twelve people. One of the other perks of business travel is the Hotel Television. For me, the Hotel Television is invariably an improvement over the Apartment Television. The ones in this hotel are big, beautiful LG sets that look so nice you can actually enjoy gazing at them without even turning them on, just by savoring their potential. However, this hotel has serious deficiencies with their Hotel Televisions. Namely, available stations.

I've never bothered to get cable because I don't believe in paying for TV. I really don't watch enough of it to warrant paying for it, and I don't want to. Hulu is bad enough. There are a couple cable channels I've always liked, though: Comedy Central (mainly Jon Stewart) and SciFi (mainly the Stargate franchise and reruns of other scifi I like. I won't call it SyFy; I think that's a stupid branding.). I usually turn to them when I'm in a hotel, and usually get disappointed with whatever they're offering while I'm actually watching, but I like to have that option. This hotel has neither channel, but does boast five different channels of ESPN, a channel that has never had anything to offer me at all.

Even worse, for the second of those weeks, I was in the second room of a two-room suite with the TV that was actually smaller and of lower quality than my home set, and somehow only got about half the channels of the rest of the hotel. On the plus side, History Channel has taught me a lot about Alcatraz, and this morning it had a neat show talking about the politics and technology of Star Wars. Oh, yeah--I'm back in California's Armpit this week, too.

Man with no plan

2009-08-22T09:50:00.002-07:00

When I was a friendless loser college freshman, I was limited in social outings to study groups, SI sessions, and fencing practice. That sounds even more pathetic when you find out that I didn't even get along very well with most of the fencing team. Especially the guy who honest to god thought he was a vampire and had the long, tapered claws to prove it. Not to mention the even sadder weirdos who followed him around.

There were a couple guys, a few years older than me, who actually seemed to fit pretty well. I got along with them because when they wanted to do bizarre things at practice that flew in the face of the rest of the team (for instance, actual physical exertion and conditioning), I completely agreed and always went along with it. Anything to thin that herd of the people who were only there for the cool pants.

They invited me once to join them at the air show. One of them had a car, and he was going to meet us at the dorms, pick up another friend, and head out from there. He said he'd give me a call. Saturday morning I saw him pull up and walk over to the other friend's dorm. I went for my shoes and hat... and they never called. I watched them drive away. Maybe they forgot. Maybe they changed their mind. No mention was ever made of it afterwards.

I stopped trying to make plans. If something happened, spur of the moment, fine. But I never counted on anyone actually coming through for me. If I made plans, I made them with myself, and it did nothing to improve my social calendar, but I was also never disappointed, never abandoned.

About a month ago, my boss got me all wound up to climb Three Finger Jack. The day before the trip, he decided that he couldn't take half his weekend to climb with me if he was going to be traveling on business Monday. He said we'd reschedule, but the open season for climbing that peak isn't long, and I know from experience that he forgets things a lot.

Thursday morning another coworker (the only other climber I know in the area, besides my boss) asked if I wanted to join him, a coworker, and his friend in climbing Broken Top. I checked my calendar--surely it wasn't Christmas already?

I got up early this morning, packed a lunch and crammed gear in my bag. I patiently began picking up the detritus of three weeks' travel from the floor of my apartment. Then he called me to say that his friend had woken up with an infected elbow. He would call back when they got it sorted out.

Half an hour ago, I finally called the second coworker to see if he had heard back from our expedition planner. "He called me half an hour ago--haven't you heard?" No climbing today. Thanks for letting me know, so I could make other plans.

Maybe I'll go for a run. That's a nice solitary activity. Not like climbing, or bouldering. I could have gone for a nice long hike--I was already packed--if I had known sooner.

What's the point in living in the middle of a mecca for all of my favorite activities if I never get to do any of them?

...and now my boss just called with the lure of a mountain biking trip "later this afternoon." I'm not getting my hopes up.

foreshadowing

2009-08-13T08:51:00.003-07:00

The machinist whose shop I've been occupying for two weeks watched as I bolted new parts onto the frame of the machine I was building. I was positively gleeful to have these parts, after ten days of shuffling paperwork trying to get the damned parts.

"Where are they going to build these things after somebody orders a hundred?" he asked. These two are sort of alpha builds, because we're shaking out all the kinks and details, and sort of not, because someone is buying them. I'm building these two because, believe it or not, I probably know more about what goes into them than anyone else at this point, if only because I built the digital model we're using as a template.

"I don't know. Japan, I guess."

"You ever been to Japan?"

"Nope."

"You will." Then he turned and walked away as I silently considered the implications of building these machines in a culture with even more powerful bureaucracy, where the only word I know is "sushi".

reminders

2009-07-17T11:43:00.003-07:00

Work suddenly got extremely busy--to the point that I was in here last weekend, too--and by the time I reached the point (this one, right now) that I had enough time to write a post, I realized I was really far behind on stuff I actually did, like the climbing trip in Utah, or the week-long bike ride in Ohio, or Gretel's parents coming out to visit for a few days immediately after the bike ride so that on top of being exhausted and sleep-deprived, I had to make my apartment look like it wasn't a SuperFund site in a little under an hour. That was more for my benefit, though. Somehow I won them over long ago (I still haven't figured out how), and they were ok with the house rule "do not, under any circumstances, open the door to that room". I liked having them here--I just wish my entire division hadn't gone insane the week before so I would have been able to actually spend some time with them during their visit.

Anyway, instead of trying to catch up now and bore you with stuff that happened a month or two ago, I'm going to bore you with brand new stuff. On to the actual post.

I miss her.

It's always somewhere int eh back of my mind, and I don't usually actively think about it. I have adigital picture frame on my desk, a Christmas present from Lady Grey, and while most of the shots are of Gretel, me, various climbing buddies, or creepy-looking bugs, the first one that I see when I turn it on is her. Some mornings I say something, usually simple, like "Gretel's parents will be here today. I suppose I should figure out what to feed them," or "I get to go climbing all next week, and it's going to be awesome." Seeing her as regularly as that, it's hard not to think about her a little, but it's not something that really distracts me from anything else I might be doing.

Two weeks ago I found out, quite by accident, that there's a bike tour in town. I've wanted to find some rides here in Oregon, because I know most of the ones in Ohio by now, and I want to see more of this state. Thing is, until I find a bike rack that will fit on my car, I'm restricted to rides that I can... ride to. Finding one that starts less than three miles from my apartment was great. Then I went to their website and found out that it benefits the Lance Armstrong Foundation and a local cancer center. Even if I had harbored any doubts, that would have sold me.

Wednesday night, as I lay in bed making fruitless efforts to sleep, I started thinking about the ride, which made me think about her. Sleep trotted further out of reach. I had strange, scary dreams of being chased through the warehouse of a large grocery by someone intent on my demise, but I don't think there was any connection.

Yesterday, on my ride back from work, I stopped to pick up my registration packet. As someone who has done more than their fair share of bike rides (though only two or three minor running events), I was pretty surprised at the amount of swag in that bag, and the T-shirt was really nice--not one of those shirts so plastered with logos and over-the-top graphics that you can really only wear it to either another biking/running event or to mow the lawn--but the two items that really got me were just sheets of paper. The first was the LAF Manifesto, which was impressively well-written and struck home--hard--on several points. The second was a card from Ryders Eyewear (offering a discount at a local bikestore on any purchase) featuring their Ride For Real campaign, touting the benefits of riding whether you're commuting on a bike or pounding the Alps into submission on the Tour de France. Unfortunately, the graphic, though intricate and impressive, was so damned small that I could only read about half of it.

There was a paper chain of names at the sign-in table. We could add links to the "Chain of Hope," and I stapled one on for her. They had tags you could pin on under yor rider number that labeled you as a "Survivor," "riding in honor of," or "riding in memory of." I grabbed one of those, too. Later, as I sat on the floor of the living room, surrounded by the things I had pulled from the bag, I suddenly realized how many reminders of what she went through were right in front of me. I suddenly felt very small and alone, and her loss registered anew.

Tomorrow morning, I'll ride (she taught me) a bike she bought me over fifty miles with her name on my back and the frog she bought me in my pocket, the earcuff she picked out under the rim of the helmet she gave me at my high school graduation party. The ring of lizards on my thumb was a gift from her. I bought my odometer on a trip Dad and I took to Maine--where she grew up--the summer after she died. Every morning I see her nose on my face and every night I wish I had learned more about cooking from her as I nuke another leftover.

She's everywhere around me.

And she's nowhere to be found.

Perhaps I'm not meant to fly

2009-07-06T19:54:00.003-07:00

After the egregious December Debacle, I avoided PDX for a while. I flew out of Redmond to visit Gretel in March and my family in April. In May, one year after our last big adventure, I flew to Utah to meet with several friends (and some of their friends) for another week of camping and climbing. On the last day, as Stout drove me to the airport, I gave him an abbreviated version of the December story, which he had not yet heard. (Apparently, he hasn't yet found this blog, or is deviously good at hiding his knowledge. Either he's a terrible spy, or a great one) Laughing as we pulled my duffel from the back of the SUV, he told me not to get stuck in San Francisco, my brief layover before returning to Redmond.

Hours later, I called him from San Francisco to tell him about my cancelled flight and hotel voucher for the night. Although I had to leave a message, he was still so entertained that while I was making my second call, to Gretel, he was already talking to the guys in the car heading back to Cleveland, which was my third call. "Yeah, we know," they gleefully explained, "he already called us!!"

Luckily, I happen to know someone in SF. I called him, hailed a cab at the hotel, and paid way too much to get across town and visit an old friend of my parents'. We had deep-dish Chicago-style pizza, I told him about the succubus, and he told me hysterically funny stories about my parents that I'd never hear from them, then told me how to use public transit to get back to my hotel for about $6.50. The flight back added a stop in Seattle where I argued with airline staff over whether or not my climbing helmet was a third carry-on item. "I can wear it, " I offered, "but I think it will freak out the other passengers."

Last month, I flew out of Portland for my bike ride. As I walked to the check-in, I absently thought of how familiar a certain bench looked, then glanced to the left and realized that I had spent two nights camped at the base of that pillar. The laughter that seized me came back when I walked past the Southwest gate that had the wonderfully comfy chairs where I sat for several hours, watching de-icers fail to de-ice while snow plows made futile, token efforts at clearing runways and tarmac staff tossed a football back and forth past snowdrifts. It was odd to have so many memories connected to a place that is usually a non-place. Airports are not destinations; they are waypoints. They are places you only visit on your way to the places you actually visit. The fact that I spent so long in that one that I actually have fully-formed, vivid, even fond memories of it run counter to everything we usually know about airports.