Category: Uncategorized

Home on the Strange…

And I really hadn’t bothered to go out and find any.  The book’ll be out soon enough and in the interim if I want to think about Harry Potter I could go back and reread the books so I could remember what details are canon versus fanfic… Or I could read fanfic, there’s been plenty of lovely writing by reliable authors lately.

Saw the movie last weekend, though. The credits were rolling and K turned to me and said “what do you think?” and I said, fervently, “That’s totally the wrong font for that background!” I also thought the movie is otherwise visually beautiful, but would be hard to follow if you hadn’t read the books.  And found myself musing about plot simplifications to keep the movie short – did their decisions about what to cut reflect any knowledge about how the series will end? 

What’s the difference between “cultured milk” and “yogurt”?  For that matter, where does “buttermilk” fit into that equation?

I have more accumulated vacation time than I thought!

We have a system. K shops, then I cook the food.

Which worked well until K got in a rut. I’ve introduced him to dozens of recipes over the years and provided him with ingredient lists for those he pronounced yummy, which theoretically should allow him to keep us supplied for a variety of meals and able to choose the ones that fit best with what’s on sale and in season each week.

So then I recently realized he’d bought the food for the same two dishes – and nothing else – for weeks.  And I was getting really tired of having my super-charged marinara/sausage sauce over ravioli, followed by chicken in a cheesy florentine sauce, followed by leftovers of each, followed by wherever we decided to go out Friday night.  REALLLLLLY tired of it.

So I rebelled.  And we decided that for a few weeks, we’d either eat out or just forage for ourselves. Eating out isn’t actually appealing since we come home from the office and work out, so cleaning up and leaving the house after isn’t appealing unless the proposed company is wonderful (Hi,

nicoleallee

and

johnbrandon

!). 

After a week or so of munching bread and cheese for dinner, I started to get inspired this week.  So two nights ago, I dug out some old frozen tuna burgers and make a sort of tuna-patty-melt with sharp cheddar, spicy brown mustard, fresh tomato, on toasted rosemary sourdough bread.  Yum.

Then tonight I stopped by the market and picked up all these fresh veggies (things K doesn’t really eat) and grilled them up.  Mmmmm, squash and peppers and portabella mushrooms. And a huge fresh spinach salad with tangy balsamic vinegarette.  MMmmmmm. 

Perhaps I’ll just go on a rampage of making something fresh and delicious every night and K will eventually be inspired to join me. Or at least start buying a broader variety of ingredients that HE likes.

I have (well, K has but doesn’t use) an old ipod.  It’s one of those full-sized ones from back when the ipod was an astonishing 30 GB… some time ago, K absconded with the earbuds for some other purpose.  And never put them back with the ipod and doesn’t remember where he put them.  Hard to get mad since it belongs to him.

So I never really liked the ipod earbuds anyway – my ears are smaller than that, I guess, because they were always uncomfortable.

So now the stoopid question – are there products other than apple-manufactured things that will fit into this little headphone jack?  ’cause I’d sure like to try some other format of headphone.  I have an idea that something shaped a little more like my favorite stethoscope earpieces will be much more appealing.

…since the topic keeps coming up.

The worst-behaved kid I knew when I was a kid…. He was a terror.  Used tantrums, whining, fits, sneakiness, or whatever other unpleasant behavior he could come up with, to get his way.  By age 8, he was an accomplished thief, played perennial hookie, chain smoked whenever he could, picked on other kids, and had the foulest mouth I’ve ever heard on adult or kid. He shot my brother with his BB gun on more than one occasion and had an ongoing agenda to try to convince me (at age 5) that I wanted to become a playboy model and shouldn’t I start practicing now? (fortunately, I wasn’t quite that naive).

He’s now a fine, upstanding, law-abiding, apparently normal father of three.  I find him terribly reassuring evidence that any kid can grow up OK.

Do any of y’all use social bookmarking pages?

I have used Kaboodle for a while but am frustrated by the inability to have any sort of layered directories and the tags seem like a pain to use and they don’t search very effectively.

So was wondering if another product would serve better.  Found this article about various products out there and was overwhelmed by all my options.

It’d be nice if Google bookmarks was more sophisticated but until then…

The New York Times has a terrible habit of filling out their science news section by dredging out old discoveries, dusting them off, and presenting them as new, late-breaking, exciting discoveries that have the potential to change the world.

Recent examples of this have included

• an article about how the action of DNA in the human body is complex (well, duh!), — er, sorry, that’s the financial pages… The points made in that article were common enough knowledge to generate one of the most memorably difficult assignments from my 1988 class in human genetics;
• another on how the onset of ovarian cancer can be marked by a limited set of regrettably non-specific symptoms, which lists findings I recall reading about in a review published sometime in the late 90’s;
• another on the idea that the desertification of fertile land in sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia has global environmental implications – I remember having this point made to me in elementary school!
• I could go on and on…

Please understand,  I’m not generally opposed to publishing articles that educate the public about the scientific truths in the world around them.  Frankly, most of us didn’t learn enough science in our primary education, and refreshers throughout life are welcome.

I’m just frustrated by the implication that this is new knowledge. It always makes me expect to see articles such as “Scientists discover things fall because of phenomenon called Gravity!” (… “This will change everything about how we design space ships”, said one NASA spokesperson. “Now that we understand this, you can expect our shuttles to stop exploding”…).  Or, how about “Hospitals revisit protocols in light of newly-discovered germ theory of disease!” or perhaps an article about how the discovery that the world isn’t flat has huge implications for the tourist industry.