Christi just got a frisbee that has a little LED light thingy in the middle of it.
What this means is that this frisbee can be lit up at night and the more die-hard (and nutty) Friz enthusiasts can now play Friz even after the Daylight Saving time change.
We tested this theory this evening to a rousing success. The illuminated frisbee seems to be sturdy enough for reasonable gameplay, flys well, is easy to catch, and is overall quite satisfactory for after-dark games of bike-friz.
A group of us had a real nice little informal, after-sundown game of Friz this evening. I’d been kind of brain fried after work and wasn’t really feeling it, but I forced myself out of my shell and am damn glad I did. The game turned out to be a total blast, Melissa turns out to be a natural at Friz, and we’ve decided that the time has come for more Chariot Races. I’m going to confirm an address tomorrow, and will be back and spreading the good word about the upcoming Chariot Racing Extravaganza. There will almost certainly be mayhem, unsound engineering, cussing, beer, and injury, so you know you WANT to be there, either as a spectator or a participant. And there’s no rule saying you can’t do both.
I said something recently about writing more frequently…and once again I did a lot of fun stuff, didn’t write about it, built up a backlog of postable material, got overwhelmed, and will be babbling forth a disjointed and photo-heavy entry…AGAIN.
So. We went to Nebraska this past weekend-ish. We left town Halloween night, did a little touristing on Sunday morning, and made it to my folks’ house early Sunday evening, just in time for a FABULOUS bean soup and fresh, home-made bread for supper.
We did a cursory exploration of Lucas, KS. We’ll be back another time to actually go to the Grassroots Art museum and to tour “The Garden Of Eden” properly. I think we’re going to do a minibreak in that area one of these days and camp out at Wilson Lake, ride the trails, then hit Lucas and take in the culture.
But, back to what we’ve been up to.
After our brief jaunt in Lucas, we got back on the road with every intention of stopping in
Minden, NE to visit the Harold Warp Pioneer Village I’m sad to say that we missed the exhibit of period rooms, but we sure saw a lot of other cool stuff. The place is a bit of a hodge-podge, and is entirely heavy on Model A Fords, but even at that, it’s pretty nifty. I’d had it mentally conflated with the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer (another place that I particularly want to visit one of these days). The Stuhr Museum has a particularly good collection of historic costume, the cream of which has been photographed for a particularly good survey book of fashion history.
Oh yes…what I’ve been up to:
My Minnie Pearl costume worked. Unfortunately, I have my eyes closed, and the price tag on my hat was blown to the back, but the outfit worked out pretty well.
It was cheek-chillin’ C O L D on Friday night, though. BRRRR. I ended up putting my sweater and jacket on over my dress pretty shortly after this picture.
Sean was a warmly-dressed sandwich, which was pretty awesome. Look closely and you will notice that his “bread” has a cup-holder. Ingenious!
Melissa & Christi, bringing the holiday cheer!
Here’s a wild-thing.
Jevon excavated his famous articulated dino-skull mask.
It dates at least back to Halloween ’06.
Super-Clint had wayyyyy too much fun being really creepy.
Just because I didn’t see them fly up into the sky doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It totally could have, you know!
I didn’t take that many meaningful pictures while I was at my parents’ place, but I did get some HILARIOUS pictures of the dog going all Mutual Of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom out on the prairie:
Fixin’ to climb up after a squirrel.
Definitely the right coloration for autumnal prairie stealth.
Water’s AWESOME when it’s her idea.
Riverbanks? No biggie!
There was still some snow to play in.
Ruby liked it:
A lot!
The visit with my folks was nice…a bit rushed, but it’s always good to get to hang out with my parents. Dad’s been recovering from rotator-cuff surgery and was still pretty sore and laid up while we were there. Being unable to use his right arm has really been working his nerves. Mom brought back no fewer than three old sewing machines from up at Grandma’s and had me go through and find out if/how they worked. Survey says they’re all great. The Singer and the Brother are my two votes for being great all-rounders. Grandma had bought this insane Necchi heavy-duty model just a few years ago, and it seems like a great machine…for someone who wants to make a lot of jeans and canvas purses. I think it’s a bit overkill for most home sewing, but what do I know? The Singer is the simplest sewing machine I have ever seen. It sews. Just straight stitch; nothing else. It’ll back stitch to end a seam, but that’s all. No zig-zags, no frills. The beauty of it is that there’s pretty much nothing to go out of adjustment and the entire thing should be easy to keep humming along nearly indefinitely. The Brother is a little fancier, but still completely intuitive to use. It has some cool pre-set fancy stitching that Mom will probably never use, but which could be put to pretty cute effect.
I told Mom that I’d try to find a PDF of the user manual for this machine, since it seems to be missing. Mom thinks that it might have belonged to her aunt Helga, and so it could have been lost anywhere between California, Maryland, and Florida!
So, I guess that’s a kind of disjointed and sort of condensed and highly illustrated version of what I’ve been up to in the past week or so. I won’t make any promises, but I will try to update more regularly, with a little more coherence and a little less photo-spam.
Forgive me this horrible pun, but two different holdups have influenced my day.
The first was a bank robbery which I apparently only just missed.
Today’s my day off, so I decided to run a few errands this morning. I went downtown to take a few books back to the library, pick up a few that had come in from Interlibrary Loan, go to the bank, pick up a few odds and ends at the grocery and go spend a gift certificate at Birdie’s.
As a bike commuter, I plan my errands on a linear itinerary so that I don’t have to double back. My plan was to come into downtown via the River Market and leave it via the crossroads/Southwest Boulevard. The bank was stop #2 on the list, but as I headed for the bank, I saw that traffic had bottlenecked as far back as the 10th & Main bus interchange. I crept along with traffic, cursing imagined delays caused by either the interminable street construction or some dumbass who’d run a light and created a T-Bone wreck. As the flow of traffic neared the 11th & Main intersection where I needed to veer leftward, I saw a bunch of police cars, lights ablaze. Not an uncommon sight in KC. I think things are boring enough that any time any little thing happens, the police flock to it. A half dozen cop cars will descend like vultures upon a crazed druggie who altercates with a convenience store clerk. I thought nothing of it, but crept past, found a bike parking hoop, locked up, and went into the bank building, only to find the bank entrance shuttered up, with a sign hanging from the door stating that the bank was temporarily closed following a robbery!
So I went on with my errands, walked down to the grocery, said “hey” to a couple of my old co-workers, got the rest of the stuff I need to make a butternut squash soup (I had the squash, but not much else) and went back to the bank. It was still closed, so I decided to skip that one for today and deal with my banking another time.
Now my trip to Birdie’s was quite fruitful. I had a gift certificate from Joel and every intention of procuring something really, really pretty:
I think I succeeded.
My plan had been for either a pretty camisole or a garter belt. I managed to cover both bases with this beauty. The garters are removable, and the fabrics (an embroidered satin and a “smoke” lace) are gorgeous.
When I was a kid, this is the kind of undergarment I thought I’d like to have when I was all grown up. Something really pretty, with lace and flowers that would best flatter the feminine charms I was sure I’d someday posses. My “charms” aren’t as charming as I was kind of hoping for, but when all is said and done, I probably have a way better figure than I deserve. And where nature failed to provide, a little prudent fibrefill will make do.
The big idea with the garters is that some while back, I mistakenly bought some merino stockings (not tights, as would have been sensible). The price was so good on them that I ended up keeping them, assuming that I’d eventually either make or acquire a garter belt or other source of stocking-keeper-uppers. And so I have. I tried this whole rig on with the stockings attached and think it will work quite nicely, plus I’ll be feeling all posh and fancy beneath my clothes, which isn’t a bad way to feel from time to time.
$110.00 and a gruesome car ride behind me, both cats are vaccinated for another year. Bonus purchase of flea treatments all around, as Ruby has managed to bring in a late-season infestation of fleas.
Ruby’s vaccinations took place back in August. The cats were due last month, but I was too broke, so it had to happen now. I don’t like delaying stuff like that, but you know how it goes.
Griswald is SUCH a piteous drama queen in the car. Ugh. All the way there and back, he was meeeryoooooowaaawawawaaaooool-ing in such a way that you’d think he was being eviscerated repeatedly and continually. I’m seriously considering calling in the services of the Mobile Vet next year when vaccination time rolls around again. It may well be worth the extra $$$ to not have to endure yet another drive with Mr. Howly-Guts again.
At least he didn’t wet himself again this year.
Last year (and also when we moved him from my old house to here) he pissed all over himself and the carrier in transit. So not only did he suffer the indignity and trauma of a car ride, he got to suffer the indignity and trauma of a bath. Both times I was surprised and thankful that he didn’t up and give himself a heart attack after it was all over.
Anyway, the cats got a clean bill of health. A little chubby, but they have maintained, to the ounce, the weights they clocked in at last year, and the vet was happy enough with that, though he said it would be better if each of them was at least a pound if not two pounds lighter. I’m still working on that one, but they really seem to have plateaued, and if they’re basically “okay” at their current weights, I am not going to sweat a lot over their diets.
They act like this (or worse) twice a day, every day. They really LOVE their food.
We went and listened to these ladies last night, and it was lovely. There’s no better word for it. Lovely.
Their voices harmonize gloriously, forming chords that paradoxically seem to have a texture and shape. It’s not just music, sounds, but more like an aural sculpture.
They chose a series of pieces from the convent of the sisters of LasHuelgas, a 13th century Spanish order who were apparently not unlike the nuns under the Prioress in Canterbury Tales. They were the younger daughters of aristocracy, who for one reason or another declined (or were unable to attain) marriage and settled into a life of genteel and urbane faith. According to the program notes,
In the early 1180s, King Alfonso VIII of Castile founded a convent near Burgos in north-central Spain at the request of his wife Leonora, daughter of England’s Henry II and Alienor of Aquitaine. It became a refuge (Las Huelgas means “place of refuge”) for royal and noble women seeking the religious life, and a mausoleum for the royal family. In 1188, it was incorporated as a house of the Cistercian order, parto of the reform movement seeking to bring Benedictine monastics back to the pure rule of St. Benedict and his ora et labora (life of prayer and work). But although cistercians were supposed to live a simple life and subsist by the labor of their own hands, these ladies gained, in some fashion, a degree of ecclesiastica jurisdiction and independence that would seem shocking today. Their abbesses could say mass, hear confessoins, and make othe rdecisions and rulings such as a priest or bishop might do. indeed, contemporary Carthusian nuns did, by regular rule, enjoy some of the se privileges when a priest was not availalbe, including the right to sing liturgical items normally assigned to a (male) deacon or subdeacon. But the cloistered, submissive life of a Cistercian was not feflected in the daily life of the aristocratic ladies at Las Huelgas.
The program notes go on to explain that the nuns of Las Huelgas were mostly well educated and very likely worked from a selection of traditional hymns as well as “popular” secular music that was retrofitted with devotional lyrics.
The music for last night’s performance had been chosen with the theme of a day of devotions, “includ[ing] songs with texts that refer to the monastic [lives] of the nuns them selves.” There was even a “do re mi” type of warmup exercise included!
While listening to this music sung in Latin, a language I don’t understand, many different thoughts shook loose. As you might guess, I thought about Chaucer, the Prioress, and thought I might want to learn some more about convent life circa 13th and early 14th century.
During one of the Kyries, I got to thinking of a Kyrie that we sang when I was in highschool chorus. It was one of the few songs we sang that had a decent alto part. When you sing alto as I do (badly) you’re a third-string backup singer anyway, and most alto parts are basically an afterthought at best, but this one particular Kyrie that we did had a really strong alto line where we really belted out some full-lunged, from-the-gut Kyries in service of the lilting sopranos above us and the rumbling basses below us. The alto, contralto, and tenor of this group all had beautiful, rich voices which lifted up the more delicate, piping tones of the soprano; the effect was not unlike an elegant wrought-iron fence enlivened with filigree-like adornments. As far as I could hear, nobody got the short end of the staff in this quartet.
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.
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.
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.
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
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:
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.
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.
I did bound buttonholes ’cause I’m basically a masochist.
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.
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).
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.
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.
