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Lost my voice

Oct 21st, 2009 by

As it happens when I don’t update in a while, lots of stuff goes on in my life…interesting stuff that I ought to write up, but don’t then when I finally get up the gumption to write, I’m just plain overwhelmed.

It’s like a larger and more personal dose of the anxiety I get when I haven’t logged on to Facebook in a while and I ought to say “hey” to a bunch of people and comment on their doings and maybe even post something that could pass as amusing, and I just get all thumb-tied (that’s what I’m calling tongue-tied for typing) and can’t figure out a darn thing to say for myself.

Anyway, I’m going to just bust out with some stuff and try to get over the brain-cramp and get back to writing here on the regular.

So, tracking back a bit…

Well, there was Bonktoberfest, which took place in the Ouachita mountains this year. As ususal, there was mayhem…not loads of it, but a little bit. The traditional Doing Something To Todd Posson’s Bike. One year someone shinnied up a tree and hung his bike about 20′ up. This year, he had the audacity to bring an unpainted bike to the shindig, and we had the audacity to autograph and graffiti it up for him.

Getting down the the real purpose of being out there, the mountain biking, I must say it was mighty-mighty fine. Joel and Christi and I rode on the Womble trail on Saturday and the Lo Vista on Sunday. Owing to a very damp fall, the trails were a wonderland of intriguing fungus.

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The weekend after B-Fest was a Bike Polo tournament, with players from St Louis and Kansas City. It was a pretty festive affair, and so I made a point to whip out my camera and annoy people.

That will be my last weekend for the foreseeable future when I’ll have Saturday free, so I made a point to enjoy every second of it.

Henceforth, until I get a different job, my days off will be Monday/Tuesday, and I can only got to Saturday/Sunday stuff after 5:00 p.m.

The new job is going pretty well. I’m starting to get to know the ropes and it’s okay and everything. No big thrills, but I expect I’m going to enjoy getting a regular fulltime paycheck and benefits again.

I don’t know what else. I’m suffering a bit of writer’s block because of not writing in forever, plus this job, being a call-center gig, just wears all the words out of me.

I’ll try to come back and be more witty tomorrow or soonish at any rate.

Posted in Adventures, meta | No Comments »

‘Cause I basically can’t follow instructions

Oct 7th, 2009 by

I have a long and colorful history of substituting recipe ingredients. Because of a combination of poor planning and poverty, I frequently find myself looking at a recipe and lacking at least one key ingredient. Today’s foray into the making of home-made power bars was typical, typical, typical. Below, anything you see italicized, is something I didn’t have.

Protein Bars, from Alton Brown

4 ounces soy protein powder, approximately 1 cup

2 1/4 ounces oat bran, approximately 1/2 cup

2 3/4 ounces whole-wheat flour, approximately 1/2 cup

3/4-ounce wheat germ, approximately 1/4 cup

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

3 ounces raisins, approximately 1/2 cup

2 1/2 ounces dried cherries, approximately 1/2 cup

3 ounces dried blueberries, approximately 1/2 cup

2 1/2 ounces dried apricots, approximately 1/2 cup

1 (12.3-ounce) package soft silken tofu

1/2 cup unfiltered apple juice

4 ounces dark brown sugar, approximately 1/2 cup packed

2 large whole eggs, beaten

2/3 cup natural peanut butter

Canola oil, for pan

Line the bottom of a 13 by 9-inch glass baking dish with parchment paper and lightly coat with canola oil. Set aside. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the protein powder, oat bran, wheat flour, wheat germ, and salt. Set aside.

Coarsely chop the raisins, dried cherries, blueberries and apricots and place in a small bowl and set aside.

In a third mixing bowl, whisk the tofu until smooth. Add the apple juice, brown sugar, eggs, and peanut butter, 1 at a time, and whisk to combine after each addition. Add this to the protein powder mixture and stir well to combine. Fold in the dried fruit. Spread evenly in the prepared baking dish and bake in the oven for 35 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 205 degrees F. Remove from the oven and cool completely before cutting into squares. Cut into squares and store in an airtight container for up to a week.

So yeah, over half the stuff I needed for the recipe, I didn’t have!

FAIL?

Nope.

Here’s what went down:

1.5 cups dehydrated TVP
1.5 cups old-fashioned oatmeal (uncooked)
1/2 c. white flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 pkg (7 oz) Sunmaid Fruit Bits (raisins, golden raisins, chopped apricot, chopped prunes, dried cherries)
1/4 c. additional raisins
1 c. chopped almonds
1/2 c. applesauce
6 oz. plain yogurt
1/2 c. brown sugar
2 eggs (equivalent amount of “Egg-Beaters” egg substitute)
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. vanilla

I pulverized the oats and TVP in the blender until they were a fine powder. I poured them into a bowl with the flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon, fruit, and nuts.

I mixed the liquid ingredients in a similar manner as recommended by Mr. Brown, then folded in the dry ingredients. As in Brown’s recipe, I baked it @ 350 for 35 minutes. Because my oven runs hot on one side, I turned the pan around @ 15 minutes.

They turned out pretty well, and tomorrow I am going to do another batch, same way, but with dried apples (local, and dehydrated here at home), instead of the commercially prepared fruit. It will basically just be apples and almonds, as well as the other stuff.

I’m sure Mr. Brown’s recipe is really awesome, and sometime I plan on actually making it per instruction, but making do with what I have right now has done well enough. Basically, most generally if you stay reasonably close with the proportions of wet and dry ingredients and don’t mix stuff that is liable to taste bad together, you’re going to end up pretty much okay. At least that’s been my experience so far, and “Experience, though noon auctoritee
Were in this world, were right ynogh to me.” – – The Wife Of Bath’s Prologue via Geoffrey Chaucer

Posted in biking, Food & Snacks | No Comments »

Bring it on!

Oct 4th, 2009 by

Well, I’m officially ready for winter, wardrobe-wise anyway.

I put up all of my warm-weather clothes and got out the cold-weather stuff. I also just finished up my new winter coat, so I guess I’m braced for the inevitable:

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As you can see, boy-howdy, is it ever purple and plaid. It’s a pretty significant departure from my usual style, being purple and bulky, but you know…free fabric speaks pretty loudly, and the quantity (and style) of fabric lent itself to a particular vintage pea-coat-inspired jacket pattern I already had on hand.

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It’s an old Butterick that had been one that Grandma had made up for my mom when she was in highschool. I’ll have to ask Mom what her coat had been made out of.

I changed it up a bit…I added side-seam pockets and a half-belt in back to give it just a little bit of shape. I also added a quilted inner-lining because I wanted this to be a honest-to-goodess coat.

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I did bound buttonholes ’cause I’m basically a masochist.

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Click on any of these for a larger view. I call my style of machine-quilting “short-attention-span” quilting…it meanders a lot. I joined satin and Thinsulate, and the outer shell is heavy wool, so this ought to be a very warm jacket.

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Here’s the back of it, for kicks.

That’s all folks. One big ol’ purple plaid peacoat (and a weird, squashy little hat that I described to my sister as looking like the demented love-child of a beanie and a beret).

Posted in Sewing | 1 Comment »

I can’t hear you; I have a banana in my ear!

Oct 3rd, 2009 by

I guess you all probably know the Bert & Ernie “Banana In Your Ear” sketch:

I never considered that the “banana in your ear” bit might have come from somewhere else, so imagine my surprise when I encountered it during a bit of Grand Ol’ Oprey schtik research:I’d fortuitously come across an entire episode of the Purina-sponsored Grand Ol’ Oprey, and was certainly enjoying the old-school corniness (1956) and then…wow! At about minute 6, Carl Smith provides an opening for June Carter’s entrance, and she comes in poppin’ like a firecracker. Incidentally, I had no idea of how hilarious June Carter was. After I watched this Grand Ol’ Oprey episode, I went to You Tube and started searching out June Carter clips, and she was something else! Such a giddy, daffy, smart-alecking persona! It was like Lucille Ball, with a twang.

Anyway, at about minute 7 in this broadcast, June busts out with the “banana in your ear” bit. I was outdone! I guess I’d always associated it with the Muppets, and to hear it coming from this cute li’l country gal!

After viewing some of June Carter’s goofiness on YouTube, I can definitely say I’ve become a fan. She was really good. I also thouroughly enjoy her affectionate use of the insult, “knothead.” I knew an old fellow many years ago who called everyone “knothead,” and now given this context, I expect he’d been a June Carter fan from way, way back.


Some of the most adorable insinuations of flirting…plus a charming song about having a “Lazy Day.”


“I just want you to know, Carl, that I know you quite well, too, and I don’t like what I know!”


“I got it wrote down in a poem here, jest the way it happened!
I crept upstairs, my shoes in hand
Just as the night took wing
Saw Ernest Tubbs, three steps above
Doin’ the same durn thing!”


“Hey, isn’t your name Archibald Henry Slaughter? You say it ain’t? Well, ain’t ya glad?!”


Just about the darndest song I ever did hear. It’s kind of like a country version of “the song that never ends.”

This is the last one I’m going to link today, but it’s extra good. The introductory comedy monologue has some ace physical comedy in it. She really was a remarkably talented young woman.

Posted in Distractions, Utter Silliness, videos | No Comments »

Full time, with benefits!

Sep 28th, 2009 by

Dude, those are four words, spoken in conjunction, that I was wondering if I’d ever hear again applied to whatever I was doing to earn my keep.

Late-08 and most of ’09 have been some rough miles on the employment front. I was looking for work and out of a job from late November ’08 through mid-April, ’09, then the only job I could find was a sporadically part-time cashier job at a local grocery store, and while I’ve grown to enjoy the work of cashiering, I must say that I’ve been on the hunt continually for something a little more…predictable?

I mean, right now, my gig is the sort where I might be in at 6:00 a.m. one day, and from 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 the next. One week I might be workin’ a fat 32 hours, then the next I might get 14. I had enough of those real short weeks to start feeling pretty nervous about my ability to remain fed and paid up.

But those worries are about to be behind me, ’cause I just got the call that I’ve passed all the screenings and jumped all the hoops, and in two weeks to the day, I’m going to be starting a fresh new job.

I’m not going to get all hyperbolic and say that it’s my dream job and that everything will be peachy keen and hunky dory, but I will say that it will be a decent gig with good pay, full benefits, and regular hours.

Plus, I can wear real clothes!

I tried to have fun with my grocery-store-lady uniform, but the long and the short of it is, that there’s only so much you can do with scarves and hair accessories, and the reality of wearing a white blouse and black pants all the time is that it is very boring and not terribly flattering.

So, being able to break out the real clothes once again will be such a joy! It comes at the time when I am cycling out my spring-summer to fall/winter wardrobe. Since I went all last winter basically bumming around the house in a horrible sweater and a pair of grotty old khakis, it’s going to feel like getting a whole new working wardrobe. Definitely looking forward to that aspect, as well as the general satisfaction of financial stability.

So, yay, new job. I probably won’t post much about it, ’cause I’m all about avoiding the Doocing, plus also I don’t know that it would be exciting enough to write about anyway.

Posted in Work/career (vague as to avoid doocing) | 9 Comments »

The Internet is great

Sep 27th, 2009 by

for being a bottomless font of covers and novelty tunes, which bring me boundless joy:


A while back I expressed great enthusiasm for the Dollyrots’ “Brand New Key,” which at the time I had no idea wasn’t original to them.

I’ve since learned that a sweet hippie folk singer named Melanie Safka was the originator of this song back in the early 1970s.

I also got to see one of few “fan-made-videos” that didn’t suck (and feature misappropriated anime characters). A young lady in 1972 shot a 8mm film meant to be set to Ms. Safka’s song:

This is AWESOME (also ADORABLE). I think I have the sewing pattern for that middy-and-hotpants outfit, also:
Simplicity 9922

Thanks also to the bounty of the Internet, I have become acquainted with the British “novelty” band, The Wurzels, who had a great hit in 1976 which was in essence a parody of Safka’s ’72 offering, “Brand New Key.” The Wurzels sang a spirited song employing the offer of the free use of a brand new combine harvester as a substantial enticement into an affair of the heart:

Oooo-arrr, oooo-arrr!

Posted in Distractions, videos | 2 Comments »

I feel a new obsession coming on!

Sep 26th, 2009 by

A little AP blurb on a dude with a metal detector who found a massive Anglo Saxon treasure hoard mentioned in the “Share and Enjoy” section of The Usual Suspects has reignited my fascination with all things Early-Medieval-To-The-Point-Of-Damn-Near-Prehistoric.

A metal detector hobbyist trying his luck in a friend’s field stumbled upon the largest to-date cache of early-medieval treasure. Dated to circa AD700 (roughly contemporary with Sutton Hoo & the Lindesfarne Gospel), this new find could open up more understanding of the travels, politics, rites, and motivations of the post-Roman, pre-Norman British people.

Here is a video of the finder, Terry Herbert, speaking about his amazing discovery.

The only thing that bothers me a bit is how much of it he recovered before he called in the archaeologists. He claims to have dug up five boxes of artifacts before the archaeologists came out, and what little I know about archaeology from when I was doing my MA tells me that you can learn nearly as much from how/where the items are found as you can from the items themselves. Then again, this is three times bigger than the Sutton Hoo ship burial, and there was certainly plenty enough to learn from that particular find. It seems, though, that a fair number of items were not excavated, or were only partially excavated so archaeologists can have a bit of their own fun:

The present list runs to 1,345 objects, including 56 lumps of earth. X-rays show them to be studded with pieces of metal. You can make out tiny decorative animals and jewel settings, but until the lumps are taken apart we will not know what’s there. In other words, archaeologists have the prospect of themselves being able to excavate part of the country’s most spectacular ancient hoard.

It seems that these two famous treasure finds will inevitably be compared and contrasted. Apparently from roughly the same time period, and containing items of stunningly high quality craftsmanship, the superficial similarities are striking. But Sutton Hoo was quite obviously the material remains a funereal rite, while the purpose of the Staffordshire Hoard is currently less clear. It has been speculated that this was the spoils of one particularly successful raid, or it could well have been the accumulations of a lifetime of raiding. Personally, I would be more likely to believe the latter scenario – that this hoard amounts to some bygone hlaford‘s “Safe Deposit Box” of stuff he and his loyal troops nicked from other, less fortunate and successful noblemen.

A set on Flickr provides fabulous detail photos of some of the treasures.

This is definitely a story I will be following with interest. I imagine my alma mater, York University is buzzing like a stirred-up beehive these days. The CMS has got to be a pretty exciting place to be at this point. As I said over at The Ususals, I thought I was cured of any interest in anything medieval after doing my MA, but old habits die hard I guess. This time, however, I’m going to leave the research and shit to the academics and just read whatever articles come out of this kickassed discovery.

Posted in Distractions, Well I'll Be Darned | 1 Comment »

Messy day

Sep 25th, 2009 by

Wow, today was pretty disgusting.

I guess it started off when I got shat upon on my way to work.

Some sort of bird which had been eating lots of something chock full of chlorophyll took a big ol’ juicy, seedy dump on my right shoulder as I rode in to work.

I kind of freaked out because I had an enormous, runny, green bird crap on my shoulder, so I took my water bottle and did my best to hose the bulk of the poo off my white blouse (work uniform!). Of course that got rid of the chunks, but a quarter-sized green patch was left behind. Also, basically my whole right-hand side was sodden due to my overenthusiastic dousing.

Joel and I rode downtown together and I guess we were keeping a fairly smart pace, ’cause I arrived at work with plenty of time to spare. It was just as well as every available minute was spent trying to budge the green stain from my sleeve and/or dry the side of my shirt sufficiently so that my undershirt didn’t shine through obscenely.

I got myself to a relative state of tidiness only to have the third messiest day I’ve ever had at this job.

The first and worst was when I was working on register 2, which has a faulty shutoff switch for the conveyor belt. A lady set her paper cup of coffee (some kind of sugary latté confection) on the belt, and when it got to the end, the belt didn’t shut off. The coffee tipped over, the lid flew off, and sticky coffee went everywhere! Down the conveyor belt, under the produce scale, all over my blouse, all over the floor. Who knew 12 ounces of coffee could spread so far? And she had really sugared it up, so I was finding (and cleaning up) stickiness for the entire rest of the evening.

The second worst mess was the night I spilled hand soap while putting away the cleaning cart. I had been wheeling the cart back into the way-back storage area of the store, and got the supply rack on the cart hung up on the double-doors from the main store floor into the back area. The hand-soap refill jug obligingly toppled over and began to glug slimy soap all over the floor. The cleanup of that mess was like something out of Greek mythology. Cutting off heads of Medusa’s hair, of the hydra, rolling a stone up a mountain endlessly….something like that. Wiping up a substance that multiplies in foamy volume as you scrub at it could well be a modern day (puny) allegory for futility.

Today wasn’t a day of such epic messes as it was a day of continual messiness. Customers brought overflowing soup cups to be weighed. One customer brought the salad dressing for her salad in cups without lids which promptly spilled on the conveyor belt. Italian & raspberry vinaigrettes are a pretty close rival to over-sweetened latté for pervasive messiness. Another guy was eating gelato which had been over-filled and it turns out he’d dribbled a fair amount on to the floor, which subsequent customers walked through and tracked all over creation before I was notified of the mess and had a chance to clean it up. An enthusiastically drooly and snot-nosed toddler insisted on “helping” his mother with the keypad for the credit/debit-card reader, and I felt duty bound to sanitize it after they left.

Ick.

After my shift, I went in the women’s restroom and scrubbed myself from fingertips to shoulders, washed my face, and re-combed my hair. I’m going to loofah the hell out of myself tonight. I just spent so much of the day feeling slightly sticky that nothing short of an exceedingly thorough bath is going to make it right.

Posted in Work/career (vague as to avoid doocing) | No Comments »

One Year Ago

Sep 24th, 2009 by

I’m a total bum, and didn’t say a peep about Joel’s and my anniversary, but this past Sunday, it was a year since we did our “I do-ing.”
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We went out to dinner on Friday and took Joel’s mom out and had a joint celebration, since her birthday was on Saturday.

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One year ago yesterday, Joel and I rode out to Santa Cruz from my aunt and uncle’s house in Ben Lomond, CA, and stuck our feet (and my head) in the waters of the Pacific. We took off on our coast-to-coast adventure the next day. From my short-lived paper journal of the trip:

Yesterday (9-24-08) we rode from Ben Lomond to about 10 miles beyond Hollister (just short of  Los Banos, I think). The countryside was mostly agricultural CA, so not very scenic. We passed by the turn-off for a town called Aromas, which amused me at least.

We found a great camping spot last night behind an abandoned house. Actually we had found an even better one earlier in the evening, but it turned out to be part of some sort of ritzy exurban development and we were gently nudged along by one of the residents.

Now the sun is up and we will be eating breakfast, breaking camp, and getting back on the road soon. I’ll take pics of the site before we go.

Okay, so this morning we were nowhere near Los Banos (no ñ).  We were about 30 miles from there.  We went on to Casa De Fruita, which is this big produce outlet/farm/event facility which is wher eGene, the man from the night before, had suggested we go.

We got coffee there and were considering our route for the day when Gene ambled up with a gift card to the fruit stand and apologies for the previous night’s gentle chivvying. Apparently his wife chastised him for not suggesting that we camp at the playground like we’d been preparing to! So, we got some grapes, nectarines, dried fruit mix, conr-nuts, and a seasoning mix for our future cooking, all courtesy of Gene.

We rode away from Casa de Fruita out toward San Luis Reservoir (which had been our original destination for the night before but was scrapped due to impending sundown).
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As we came upon the reservoir, the scenery, especially the contrast of the colors of trees, grass, water, sky, and sand was so striking I had to stop and snap a few pictures. The Louis Armstrong song, “What A Wonderful World” popped into my mind:

Over all, getting to Los Banos involved a LOT of climbing…about 1000 feet over a stretch of about three or four miles. Yikes! That actually kind of sucked, but at leas tthe shoulder was wide and the winds were gentle. We stopped in Los Banos to eat our lunch and have a wee siesta.

I guess I got a little carried away with my nap as it ended up being about 45 minutes – but it felt so good! The ride from Los Banos to Merced totally blew. Once we got off HWY 152 and on to 59, there was no shoulder and a lot of traffic, most of it semis and large farm trucks. Luckily there was a dirt frontage road that largely paralleled 59 and we mostly rode on that. The going was a little rough and harder, but at least we were dicing with semis. We ended up stopping at a little motel in Merced for the night as this area seems pretty inhospitable to stealth camping. So we had showers and washed clothes and anticipate a full and peaceful night of sleep.

Posted in 2008 Coast-to-Coast Adventure, Adventures, Family | 2 Comments »

Kingsblood Royal

Sep 23rd, 2009 by

If you want my opinion (and if you don’t why are you reading my blog?!) I think that Sinclair Lewis is probably the most insightful author ever to come out of the USA.

Probably four years ago or so, I read my first Lewis book, “Babbitt” on the strength of the prudish, boorish, racist Upson family in Auntie Mame having been described as “Babbitty.” I figured by this brief reference, that this would be an interesting dissection of the ultra-conventional upper-middle-class WASP type…which it was. But it was also a surprisingly prescient look at urban/suburban development. Lewis fairly accurately predicted the spread, sprawl, and subsequent degradation that would come of streetcar suburbs and automobile dependence. As did one of my other favorite Dead White Guys, Booth Tarkington in The Magnificent Ambersons. In fact, BT placed a magnificent and amazingly premonitory anti-car rant in that book that I will sometime later post in its entirety for some analysis/discussion.

Anyway, back to Sinclair Lewis. Shortly after I read Babbit I motored through Main Street, recognizing much of the society airs that are still trotted out in provincial communities in the midwest.

I wish I’d been aware of Tarkington at the time I read Dodsworth, as I think the contrast of a story written from the industrialist’s point of view would have been fascinating read in conjunction with Ambersons, where an automobile maker is cast as a mild antagonist.

Of Lewis’s other books, I’d only read “Cass Timberlane,” which is a study of the delicate and easily upset balance of class and how it affects men’s and women’s relationships with one another. In this story, a well-respected judge marries a younger, frivolous but very beautiful working-class girl who finds adaptation into the Judge’s stuffy social set a difficult (and nearly disastrous) transition.

Anyway, I went into Kingsblood Royal knowing nothing about the story. From the title, it sounded like it might be another story criticizing exploitative real-estate development, for “Kingsblood Royal” sounds like the sort of pretentious name that real-estate developers like to give to subdivisions. Imagine my surprise (and gratification) to learn that it’s a nuanced, and introspective tale about race perceptions and relations in mid-century America.

Neil Kingsblood is a WWII vet, sent home from the front with a debilitating injury to one of his legs. As he settles back into civilian life as a low-ranking banking official, he is persuaded by his father to undertake an amateur genealogy project to determine whether or not their family can trace their roots back to some putative shirttail relation of Henry VIII. What he discovers is that he is, in fact, descended from a renowned trapper and wilderness guide of Martinique birth and African descent.

Previous to this discovery he’d always considered Black people with impatience and contempt and unselfconsciously participated in the casual racist speech that was common in his time. As he accepts the reality that in some parts of the country, he, pale-skinned, and red-headed, WASP-looking though he was, would be considered “colored,” he starts to realize that the stereotypes might not be altogether true. He begins to reach out to the black community in his town to learn more about his newfound racial status. He goes to a black church and re-unites with a black classmate whose intellectual family give him a pretty straight-shooting introduction to the prospects and experiences of African Americans in their time.

I’ve only gotten about halfway through the book so far, so I can’t say whether or not Neil Kingsblood manages to help Ash Davis fund de-mob services for returning black veterans, or how Neil’s family and friends will take the revelation of his racial heritage, but if the so-far frank tenor of the book carries through, it should be one hell of a ride.

I know I’ve written before about how I’m dumbfounded by some of the books that become canon and some of the ones that are left to molder in obscurity, and I’m feeling another such rant coming on. This is a book that ought to be included in the canon of books dealing with race relations in this country. Sure, a lot of the language is very coarse – slurs that were in common parlance at the time are used freely…by people of whom one is supposed to get a bad impression. I know schools are (rightly) squeamish about “The ‘N’ Word” and others, but I think that especially at the college level, students ought to be able to distance themselves from the text and take it in context of its time. Especially when, in a case like this, the author is directly criticizing free and malicious use of slurs and insulting language.

Posted in books | No Comments »

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