Scrappy Blog

I’m looking at quiche recipes on the web and seeing a broad variety of ratios of egg, cheese, and milk/cream.

I’d like to make quiche using egg whites (better’n’eggs or similar), skim milk, and cheese.  What ratios do my culinary friends recommend?  Also, what are good cheeses to add?

We are heading out for my Mom’s family reunion in Ohio.  Currently I don’t have a seat on the plane so this could be a long, unpleasant travel day.  I have ipod with hours of podcast content, several paperbacks, and a puzzle book.  Hopefully that should keep me happy during any long waits. 

Meanwhile, a food for thought:  in the past couple years, gas prices have risen more than 100%.  Now I’m seeing news services gleefully congratulating the American public for decreasing gas consumption by 2-3%.  Um…..? 

Part of me feels sorry for those members of the public who find themselves stuck with a long commute and a gas-guzzling car.  The other part of me remembers that I’ve spent the last decade paying twice as much for half the square footage so I wouldn’t have a long commute, and risking my life on the roads because their SUVs and Hummers would squash my little energy-efficient car. 

Now my < 5-mile commute and Prius look worth the cost, hmm? 

I haven’t posted in a while so I’ll do the book meme.

From many:

I may yet read a fiew of those left untouched – they’re things I have no objection to reading but haven’t got an immediate plan to go find them and read them…

Anyone know where this list came from?

As I drove home, I noted a huge to-do on W loop 610 northbound blocking all lanes of traffic… I didn’t take the time to look much so as not to worsen the gaper’s delay on the southbound side. But there were flashing lights and ambulances and firetrucks and people on foot milling around and as I said all lanes of traffic were blocked. Oh, and helicopters, there were helis but I didn’t look to see if they were news or lifeflight or both. Other people, of course, were making crazy lane changes to the left to better survey the potential gore and destruction.

I was curious enough to google it to see what might have happened – about an hour after I arrived home, I tried a variety of google query combos on both regular google and google news. I tried the local newspaper site. And… nothing. No report of whatever event went on there.

I recently implemented a tool that lets my users send a prescription directly to the pharmacy electronically, rather than calling it in, faxing it, or printing it out. Most have been delighted to adopt it. One woman, though, simply refuses to trust that it works. I’m monitoring activity really closely right now since it’s a new thing and I don’t want any mistakes to lead to medications being delayed… so all day long I was seeing this woman’s notes. There’d be the automatically generated text showing that a presription was submitted electronically, followed by a additional note: “faxed to pharmacy just to make sure”.

I have showed her the audit trails that confirm that the pharmacy receives the prescription, showed her the proof of multiple successful prescriptions sent over the past week, etc… she still simply refuses to trust that this magical electronic thing will really work. But the fax, of course, that’s always reliable, right?

Sigh. Loads of pharmacists in Katy will be cursing this woman as they process all those duplicate prescriptions….

So I wore a above-the-knee dress today ($13 at Sam’s – I think it was so cheap because the sizing was weird; I usually would wear a medium and the XL fits just right). My co-workers teased me a bit about flashing some leg and one said envious things about my great tan and smooth skin. Seems she didn’t realize I was wearing hose. I told her I had hose on and she looked dubious, then reached down and touched my leg to see if I was telling the truth!

Ah, social skills. You find so many of them among medical professionals…

K called from the airport and noted he just dropped his cell phone, cracked the screen so it’s no longer readable.  This is the impetus we need to invest in new phones, methinks.  Both our phones were very basic models 3+ years ago when we bought them.   At the time we didn’t look at any of the cool stuff you can do other than just call people.

So now I’m looking at what else you can get along with basic cell service.  I’m intrigued by the idea of some sort of internet access connected with the phone bill.  Also curious about cell cameras and how they do, and curious about MP3s stored on the cell phone so I didn’t have to carry a separate device.  But I’m clueless, not even sure where to start reading about what’s out there.  Advice? 

I may read the book referenced in this article. (gleaned from my flist)

I became intrigued by the role of politeness in close relationships after watching a number of couples  who,  after some years of marriage, are reduced to barking commands at one another and squabbling over minutia every day.  Even in the closest of relationships, I have come to believe there’s a real value in taking the momentary effort to be polite.

However, I don’t know if I agree that saying “Please” and “Thank You” equates to insincerity.  There’s a school of thought that says that remembering to say “Thank you” actually reminds you that you are, indeed, thankful in some small way.

What do y’all think?

I hadn’t planned to post on the open-source-boobs issue, but a conversation I was just reading (hi,

greeneyes_rpi

!) gave me a couple flashes of thought that I thought I’d process by writing down and hanging up in the wind for people to take pot-shots at. 

Issue 1:  There are certain issues that drive some of my friends nuts, and leave me curiously unaffected.  This is one of them.  And I have always been made to feel that this is a failing on my part.  It’s just sort of occurred to me that I’m letting my own honest reactions be demonized rather than argue with friends.

Had I seen a bunch of people mingling around with OSB buttons at an event, I’d probably roll my eyes, think it was a bit juvenile, and get on with my life.  I wouldn’t feel threatened and I wouldn’t really feel insulted – though I probably would choose not to hang out with someone who was entertained by the whole thing.  Why am I like that?  Dunno.  My life has included quite a bit of witnessing rampant sexist behavior (hi,

ciaracat

, enjoyed your post earlier!) and at the same time, no direct painful personal experiences involving sexism.  Perhaps that’s left me unempathetic.  My professional training has involved quite a bit of breast-groping, which perhaps also makes me rather unsentimental about breasts in particular. 

So, yeah, I’ve been kind of mulling on finding a balanced position in a situation where there’s both overreaction or underreaction – and wondering whether sometimes I’m made to feel unnecessarily guilty that I’m NOT riled up about some subject or other.

Issue 2:  As I was reading various posts on this and on other sexist environments today, I came to think about the concept of culture vs rights.  Certain activities seem to be attached to distinct cultures, and much brouhaha ensues if you say  “I want to be part of your activity but I’m not willing to accept the associated culture – so therefore you have to change to allow me to participate”. 

Examples: I find that I’ve never chosen to join a church because there are certain cultural aspects in many churches that don’t appeal to me.  (badly worded sentence, may or may not try to edit later).  I chose not to be a surgeon – while I love tools and fixing stuff, the culture of surgeons has aspects that I find repugnant.  I will never willingly live in certain parts of the Middle East because there are aspects of that culture that I wouldn’t want to live in. 

Clearly sometimes it is reasonable to demand that a culture change to make you more comfortable – for example, if women (or some other group) are made to feel uncomfortable in a setting where important business gets done, then they can’t succeed in the business world.  But how do I draw the line?  Clearly it’s also sometimes unreasonable:  shouldn’t say “You Jehovah’s Witnesses should stop prosyletizing ’cause it makes me uncomfortable and I want to be a JW – oh, and while you’re at it you should change your mind about the transfusion thing!” 

So anyway… headed off to dinner now, I look forward to such comments as people feel inclined ot leave!

Work:  Lotsa busy.  Am learning something new every moment, and scrambling to keep up. So far they seem pleased with my progress.  Life will be easier when the new IT girl comes on.  Next week involves two dinner meetings and the week after, will be mostly spent in Dallas.  Last week was a trip to San Antonio.

Home:  Something is wrong with my shower – a few tiles sort of caved in at the base and there’s a gap behind them.  Haven’t got the nerve up yet to pull the tiles off and dig around behind them to see what’s up, tho I have bought the grout-removal kit for my dremel.  I’m hoping it’s a local defect I can fill in, perhaps with some filler epoxy, and replace the tiles without further fuss. 

K:  Is starting to think he’d like to find some new direction professionally.  He’s wondering what sort of opps might be out there in the renewable energy domain…  he’s gotten pretty disgusted with the cancer research thing.  I doubt this line of thought will result in any hard decision-making for months or years to come, but in the meantime he’s buying all kinds of interesting books to browse.  Because, you know, we really needed new books.

Friends:  are as always dear to me.  Spent this morning at a memorial service for one of my dearest friend’s grandmother – I met her only a few times but she seemed to have some of the same qualities I find delightful in my friend.  Spent the afternoon at a wedding shower where the guests of honor (future bride and groom) decided that they’d take the chance to clear out stuff (combining homes does lead to a need to thin out the belongings).  So they had a white elephant gift exchange for the guests!  Hot trading activity for the papasan chair; less interest in the collection of old ties.  Very entertaining.  I realized after that I was crass and left a price tag on my gift to them – and since it was a real bargain I guess they now know how cheap I am.  Not that it’l be a surprise to anyone.  I assume that if I’m planning to give them a nice wedding gift I’m not really obliged to spend a lot on a shower gift as well…  Upcoming weekends will include a child’s birthday party, a beach weekend with friends, and a wedding. 
 
Family:  I finally got around to making the surprise gift payment on my brother’s school loans – have been planning it for a while.  Hope it comes as a nice surprise next time he looks at his balances.  I probably should be thinking about when/how I’m going to arrange to spend time with them over the summer.

Beasties:  Gracie continues to be the cat without fear and we finally gave in to her pleas to allow her to go outside.  We insist on supervising her.  This led to K meeting the neighbors who have lived next door for more than a year – I had to go out of my way to meet them and K never had.  But they wondered why this man was standing in their frontyard looking at their shrubbery, so came out to investigate.  It’s fun to spend a sunny hour or two watching them scamper around chasing butterflies and trying to climb trees.

Other:  I’m sure there’s lots, but K wants to go work out now so I will not write further…