1/30/04

It is necessary for everyone in the world to see this. I managed to make people that are at the height of grant-writing stress laugh by showing it to them.

1/26/04

This weekend I made a hat for my mom at lightning speed. The swatching took twice as long as the actual hat making--I was designing it, and doing an allover Fair Isle pattern for the first time (which as I've said before, makes me inexplicably angry), and messing around with color combinations, and then I needed a size 6 circular, etc, etc. But once it got going, it just flew.

I didn't even want to shred it--I think I'm getting more used to two-color knitting.

It's blocking at the moment, then off it will go, and when she gets it, I'll put a picture up. I hope she likes it. It's a little busier than she'd usually go for. But the busy-ness is very impressive, which means she'll be able to brag about her creative and scientific daughter.

It'll be a tough call for her, I'm sure.

1/23/04

Jeremy have many long-running jokey arguments going. I really think this is a key to our almost total lack of actual fighting.

You know how it goes. Your day is happening, about as normal as it ever is, but something's just wrong. You get a little frustrated, and by the time you get home, you're feeling kind of punchy. And there's that big fat target right there, watching the Simpsons and drinking some grapefruit juice. There's really no good reason to fight, but you're itching for one.

So instead of getting into a real fight, I mock his bitter, horrible juice in the most hilarious way possible. Then he says something rude but equally entertaining about my love of delicious and exhalted Hostess products, since he sat staring at a grant full of popular PC-isms all day and needs 30 seconds of meanness to even out his own mood.

And then we fake offense, giggle, and start dinner.

Much better than getting into a fight about garbage or laundry or something boring and unfunny like that.

One of our regular sources of inspiration is sitting in the bottom of his tae kwon do gym bag as we speak.

The Jock.

Necessary, I know, but horrible, horrible, horrible. I refuse to touch it. At the laudromat, I'll pick up a pair of pants and use them as tongs to get the disgusting thing out of the dryer.

He responds by placing them on his head when we're folding them a few minutes later.

And so it goes.

Last night was laundry night, and he brought his gym bag up from the car, where it had been sitting since the day before. As he throws his uniform and sundries into the hamper, I hear a noise.

Crunch. crunch-crunch.

J's holding the jock, bending it to and fro.

Apparently the look on my face was priceless. I don't remember much but my pure, unadulterated terror, and then J's laughter as he said:

"It's FROZEN. Really, I'm not so dirty I can make it crunchy, can I? Calm down."

Remind me next time we do laundry, to bring a 10-foot pole with which I will NOT touch that thing.

1/21/04

Someone found my website recently by looking for "catcher oof the rye", which is so delightfully incorrect as to merit its own blog entry. (the dozens of misspellings of "crotchless" and "tchotchke" I get on a regular basis don't).

Despite the incorrectness, I decided I want to write this book. The main character would be the baseball playing son of a Jewish baker that gets beaned by a stale pumpernickel. I don't know what would happen after that, but it would be good. I'd just have to mess with the punctuation.

"Catcher: 'Oof, the rye!'"

1/16/04


I added something to the crafty section--this is the sweater that resulted only in heartache.

Oh, well, learn from my mistakes. Here you go.

In better news, I finished the back of St. Brigid at my knitting group last night. It's really lovely and I think it will be truly striking when it's done (a good kind of striking, by the way). The front will have to wait awhile though, as I start a hat for my mom. Only two projects on needles at a time! says my knitting concience.

1/14/04

Nothing improves my day quite like a saucy nun. (link courtesy of Creating Text(tiles).)

1/13/04

So, I feel really strongly about animal testing. Strongly for it, I mean. It would be really difficult to be a scientist and feel any other way, knowing the extent to which the safety and comfort of lab animals need to be taken into account for ANY testing to be done, and knowing the piss-poor quality that human life would be without it.

However, it seems like kind of an intentional neener-neener dance biologists do just for the sake of PETA advertizing that the cutest, saddest eyed dogs are among the most popular breeds for lab tests. It's because they have a sweet, calm temprament that they're so popular, actually. You don't want 100 yippy dogs recovering from surgery simultaneously, believe me.

It makes me respect the folks I work with all the more. They keep the animals in good shape, and pet them and make them happy, but they also know that these animals have not been raised in human homes, and are not pets, and would be destined for euthanasia even if they didn't touch a hair on their heads. They've been trained to keep a distance.

On an entirely related note, I've seen some really interesting surgery in the past few days, although by "seen", I mean "mostly squinched up my eyes and listened to what was being described." It's the price of being both squeamish and curious.

Very cool stuff, though. A lot of animals and people will have more full, happy, complete lives if the research works (and it is so far).

1/9/04

I created unique deliciousness for dinner last night. I present to you:

Curry Pot Pie

There are a few listings on Google, but they are of poor quality. Curry powder does not a curry make, and rice is not a pie crust.

Also, I know it sounds kind of wierd, but trust me on this one. The buttery pie crust adds something wonderful to Indian spiciness. I was inspired by a recent vegetarian special at Monty's Blue Plate, that had curry served over some buttery, flaky biscuits. It's a perfect comfort food combination.

So, general directions. Feel free to vary the amounts of vegetables, substitute meat for the tofu, etc. Just keep these things in mind as you do:
1: You'll want 4-5 cups of "stuff" to put into the pie shell, so if you use vegetables that cook down a lot, start with more.
2: Remember that these things are going to get cooked in a pan, then baked for a while. Veggies that won't hold up to this treatment may end up kind of nasty. Green beans and broccoli come to mind. Sweet potatoes would be wonderful.

Ingredients:

*A double batch of pie crust--use your own recipe, or be lazy like me and use the Pillsbury ones (if it hadn't been a weeknight, I might have made my own, but I was hungry).
*2 medium baking potatoes, diced in .5 inch cubes.
*a medium carrot, cut in a short julienne (I made julienne strips and cut them in half).
*4 oz. mushrooms (half a square package), quartered.
*A package of firm silken tofu, cut in .25 x .25 x 1 inch rectangles.
*Half a white diced onion,
*A clove or two of minced garlic,
*Some oil--any is fine, sesame is extra-tasty.
*A few cups of water
*Some flour or cornstarch (thickener)
*A decent curry sauce recipe--this one looks pretty similar to mine, without the fenugreek and with some extra cumin. You'll want the overall consistency of this sauce to be reminicent of pot pie gravy, so avoid drier curry recipies. Also, keep the spiciness between mild and medium-hot. Too spicy and you'll never be able to taste the pie crust.

Directions:

Get out your big deep frying pan. A lot of stuff is going into it.

Fry the onion and garlic in the oil until they've got a nice tan. Add the spices, potatoes, and a cup and a half of water. (if one was using meat, cook it before the potatoes, I guess).

While the potatoes are cooking, put a pie crust into the bottom of a pie pan, and have a second one ready.

Add water to the potatoes as necessary--if the sauce is looking a little thick, add a cup. I ended up putting 2-3 cups of water in throughout the process.

Simmer until the potatoes are nearly cooked through, then add the carrots and mushrooms.

This would be a good time to turn the oven on--375, please.

Mix the vegetables around for a couple of minutes, then add the tofu and just get it coated.

At this point, play with the sauce a bit. The starchiness of the potatoes will thicken the sauce some, but you may want to add a half-teaspoon of cornstarch or a few teaspoons of flour. Again, think of a gravy-like consistency.

When the sauce is right, turn off the heat and let things cool off for a minute or two, then throw the whole mess into the pie pan. Cover with the second pie crust, and thoroughly seal the edges. Cut a few slits in the top. Put a cookie sheet under the pie in case you didn't seal those edges as well as you thought you did--it's easier to clean a cookie sheet than an oven.

Stick in oven.

Start up some rice, do some dishes.

Wait for 20-35 minutes (I lost track), until the crust is golden brown and the curry is bubbling through the slashes in the top pie crust.

Pull it out of the oven, let it rest for 5 minutes, and serve with rice.

I'm going to eat this for the rest of my life.

1/7/04

Knitting! I haven't talked about knitting in awhile. I try to bore all sectors of my reading public in equal measure. If string doesn't do it for you, move on.

I realized today that I forgot to take pictures of the Christmas presents that I knit. They're all off in their homes now. I made a hat for everyone in my dad's family: that's my dad, stepmom, two half-sisters, three stepbrothers, and step-in-law (wife of a stepbrother).

And a partridge in a pear tree. 8 hats.

My sisters both got earflap hats made with the fuzzy yarn I made my purse out of. Becca, who I taught to knit the last time I was home, also got a set of needles and the leftover yarn from her hat (almost a whole skein), and I showed her how to make wrist warmers. One was halfway done when I left.

My stepmom got a hat painfully similar to Coronet, in the most recent issue of Knitty. Painful, because I'd made up the pattern myself and considered sending it in. My cable pattern was nicer, though--leaves on a vine. Looks like a crown of laurels.

My dad got the only hat I had a pattern for, out of Knitter's Stash. Very cabley.

Of the remaining four hats, two were one-color, with fairly simple ribbing and cabling (but were my favorites, I almost kept them), and two were a further experiment in two-color knitting. I finally got comfortable with having a yarn in either hand, occasionally weaving in a float that seemed too long, not having any puckering of the fabric, and ended up with a lovely item.

Nevertheless, you probably won't see me working on a Fair Isle sweater anytime soon.

The problem? Two color knitting makes me ANGRY. Angry, angry, mad mad. No idea why. Sit me down for 10, 15 minutes of it and I'm bristling, ready to slap someone.

This doesn't mean I'll never put a little border on something ever again--the effect is lovely, no doubt, and I even have 2 near-future projects in mind where I'm planning on using multiple colors. But a whole sweater? All those little strings hanging everywhere, taunting me?

Duck and cover.

1/6/04

Because Google has not met my need, and because somehow, somewhere, someday, someone else is also going to wonder, here is a link regarding the vaginal cul de sac of an opossum.

Apparently both the lady and manthings of opossums are forked. Who knew?

Incidentally, this is inevitably what happens when I spend a lot of time with the biologists we work with. I get a whole lot of work done, but then the whole thing grinds to a halt as someone finds one crazy paper when they're looking for something that's actually related to the work we do. Or one of the vets mentions doggles in a completely serious way. Hilarity always ensues.

Anyway, that's what I learned at school today. Top that.

1/5/04

There's something in my soul that needs snow. Big, fat flakes of it. Preferably on a Sunday, so I don't have to go outside in it if I don't want to, and can stay comfy and warm and very slowly work on a lovely sweater and look out the window, in a silent house, while my husband half-naps, half-reads a beekeeping book in the bedroom.

I had that yesterday, and today I feel complete and content.

Snow is rarer in Wisconsin than I expected it to be. Most of the time, the weather leads to a condition I'd never heard of before coming here--"too cold to snow". Too cold for monster flakes, at least. Usually, when white stuff does fall, it's not snow the way I think of it, but tiny ice crystals, sharpened by the wind, that cut at my face as I wait at the bus stop.

Snow that hurts.

Angry Snow.

In a few days, the snow on the ground right now, that made me so happy yesterday afternoon and evening, will be transformed by the wind and cold, cold dryness, into Angry Snow. It's the Jekyll and Hyde of precipitation. All I can do is wince and remember my scarf.

1/2/04

Damn, Angelfire just ate my totally pointless entry. Let's try this again.
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So, most days I bring my lunch, and along with my lunch I usually bring a juice box. On one hand, this works out just fine, because I like juice, and don't like soda, and I need some way to keep myself hydrated. On the other hand, I know I look like an 8-year old whose mommy just packed her lunch, especially when I have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in there.

My current lunchtime juice box is from Juicy Juice, and is named "Watermelon Madness!". Last time I bought a box of "Apple Frenzy!". They taste like smooshed up fruit, not mental illness. Only now the marketing people have implanted this thought in my head, so the entire time I drink the juice, all I can come up with are new flavor/brain problem combinations.
Strawberry Social Anxiety!
Mango Mania!
Durian Depression!
Pear Psychosis!

Could this inability to think of anything else while I drink juice through a straw become a flavor in itself? Orange Obsession, maybe, or Tangy Tourette's.