Teleidoscope

Thu, Jan 31, 2008

Restaurants

Posted at 6:47 pm MST to Travel

I don't eat take-out food when I'm at home, and I rarely eat at restaurants. I think that in the past year, other than when I have been travelling, I have eaten take-out 4 or 5 times at user group meetings and other meetings at the office, and probaby about the same in sit-down restaurants: just a few special occasions. Let's see, there was a dinner with Nanette at an Indian place before a concert, and my birthday dinner, a dinner with my friend David at a German restaurant, and a couple of lunches with Nanette, one at a Mexivan place near her office and one at Casa Alvarez. I may be forgetting one meal, but probably not two.

The Farmers' Market is a special case: the food from the food court there is not standard restaurant food, and it mostly comes in reasonable portions. And I think spending hours on my feet and working (especially during squash season) pretty well balances those calories.

When I'm travelling and living in hotels, my eating patterns are very different from when I am at home. Living in corporate housing in 2005 was another pattern: I ate lunches from my customer's cafeteria (mmm, noodle bowls on Tuesdays and Thursdays) and cooked my own dinners. This actually worked out pretty well: my weight stayed pretty stable. I think the lunches I had been packing in previous corp housing episodes contributed to the weight gain in those years.

I have two or three problems with restaurant food. One big problem is portion size: I was raised strictly to clean my plate, and that is a habit which is very had to break. Restaurant portions in this country are not human-sized. Village-sized, maybe.

Aside from the calories involved, I've noticed that one of the times I'm at risk for swallowing problems is at the end of a meal, when I am getting full, which gives me some incentive for portion control.

Subway sandwich places are good: their food is in reasonable portions and not all fried, and you can control the ingredients. Applebee's WeightWatcher's menu also has human-sized portions and at least a little variety.

Another minor problem with restaurants is that they are really not intended for solitary eaters. Restaurant meals are really very boring when you are alone. And my budget (and expense accounts) don't usually run to the kind of restaurants where the food can be the total focus of attention. Subway and Applebee's both have take-out options so I can eat in my hotel room with the TV on. Wrap-and-smoothie places are good for that, too.

But one of my biggest problems with restaurants is finding things to eat. That sounds weird, but I have a strange mix of food sensitivities, even aside from the swallowing problems that make me a little paranoid about eating in public. (Big chunks of red meat, like steaks, are pretty hopeless unless I want to spend my meal time in the ladies' room trying to unlock my esophagus).

Dairy: I think I started going dairy-intolerant in high-school or before. I say dairy-intolerant rather than lactose-intolerant because dairy fat seems to be more of a problem for me than the dairy itself: non-fat or low-fat dairy hits me a lot less hard than full-fat stuff. Actually, I can't remember ever really liking whipped cream on things just for the sake of having whipped cream. But it wasn't until college, when I controlled my own food and drink choices, that I stopped drinking milk with my meals.

I don't drink milk by itself, and I need to watch my total dairy intake or pay the price, but except for selecting desserts -- and avoiding really rich cream sauces -- the dairy thing isn't a big problem in restaurants.

My youngest brother wasn't so lucky. He had duodenal ulcers as a child and learned to live on huge amounts of dairy (which is what they prescribed in those days). Then in college he ended up in the emergency room because his ability to process lactose shut down. He thought the initial discomfort was the ulcer kicking up and increased his dairy intake, which turned out to be the wrong thing to do.

Penicillin: I have been told that I nearly died when I was a year old, probably because I was given penicillin for whatever it was that I actually had. You wouldn't think of a penicillin allergy as a dietary restraint, but one way I know that I really am allergic to penicillin is that I had my tongue start swelling up once when I ate a baked stuffed tomato that had blue cheese in the stuffing. The blue in blue cheese is a strain of penicillin mold. So -- no blue cheese for me. No brie or Camembert either: I haven't tried them, but the white molds are penicillin varieties, too, and it would be stupid to take the risk.

So... limited dairy other than aged cheese and yogurt, and, for most purposes, no French cheeses. French cuisine is pretty much out for me.

Peanuts: I never liked peanut-butter, or peanut-butter flavored anything when I was a child. My Mom made me jelly sandwiches when she made PB&Js for the other kids. I don't think we actually realized I might be allergic. I could and did eat small amounts of fresh roasted peanuts with apparent problems.

I suspect I'm actually sensitive to a break-down product, which why the fresh peanuts used to be less of a problem. I've avoided even the fresh peanuts for the past 10 years or so: I started getting the tongue-swelling thing from some of them. I eat cashews and pistachios instead (very reasonably priced at Costco).

The peanut problem is one reason I avoid fried fast food: I once got the tongue-swelling thing from some fried food at a mall food-court, and I suspect it was due to breakdown products in the peanut oil they were using for frying. Either that or they were being all trendy and using cold-pressed oil or something.

So: paranoid about restaurant fried foods and I've never acquired a taste for Vietnamese cuisine (the rule of thumb for Vietnamese dishes seems to be: when in doubt, add peanuts). I'm carefull about Chinese food too: I've never challenged the allergy enough for the small amounts of peanut oil used in stir-frying to be really dangerous, but I don't order anything where the menu mentions peanuts.

Raw Lettuce: This is a weird one. So weird that it was only a few years ago that I really understood it was a problem. For years, salads gave me heartburn, but I always blamed it on something in the dressings, even though changing dressings didn't seem to make much difference. Given a choice of soup or salad with a meal, I just always chose the soup -- unless it was something I really couldn't stand. And I always had an odd habit of eating sandwich makings (not including lettuce) loose instead of making them into a sandwich.

Then, on a business trip, I got hot sandwich with some lettuce in it at a Subway and then got stuck on a phone call in my hotel room so the sandwich got cold before I could eat it. I nuked the sandwich in the room's microwave, cooking the lettuce. That was the first sandwich I'd had in years that didn't give me heartburn.

Since then, I have been avoiding lettuce. I've been doing it much more carefully as my swallowing problems progressed: the irritation of lettuce in my esophageal lining seems to make swallowing problems more likely later in the meal.

I haven't quite figured out whether it is a sensitivity to raw lettuce, or to raw greens in general. Lettuce is about the only green where raw is usually the only option. I don't eat raw greens. And even cooked, I prefer chard to spinach, but I think that is a different problem (see below).

It's a little ironic that lettuce is one of our major products at the farmers' market.m People ask me how the lettuce is, and I can't answer.

Eating at Mexican restaurants (especially cheaper meals) without eating lettuce can be ... odd. But both Mexican and Greek places will leave out the lettuce they use as filler if you ask.

Supertaster: I'm not completely certain that I am a supertaster. But my list of food aversons is a suspiciously good match for parts of the supertaster list. Coffee, grapefruit juice, cabbage and its relatives, spinach... Green tea, olives, soy products and chili peppers are all acquired tastes, as are broccoli and cauliflower.

Bitter anything mostly sends me in the opposite direction. And I have to admit, even after all of my years in Colorado and selling chillies at the farmer's market, I still lean to the gringo end of the Mexican food spectrum.

I also seem to be one of the people who genetically find cilantro to taste like soap

In any case, when I eat out, even aside from finding food in sane quantities, it can be a challenge to find food that tastes good and is safe for me to eat. On the other hand, aside from the fact that I tend to live on bread, fruit and cheese, my preferred diet is fairly healthy.

Actually, based on my experience with the lettuce, I should probably get tested for food sensitivities. There may be something else unexpected that is setting off some of the swallowing problems. I have some suspicions about wheat bran... or maybe it's a breakdown product in the whole wheat flour. I should try keeping it in the fridge as is often recommended.

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Temperature

Posted at 7:45 am MST to Weather

It's very cold today, and it snowed over night. It's just a couple of inches, but I'm glad I'm working from home again. According to the radio, the roads are a mess.

I'm cold, too. I've been coughing a lot for the past day or so, and feel a bit odd, so I tried taking my temperature. I'm not sure 96.4 F counts as human... maybe I'm transitioning to undead?

There's some kind of crud going around the office. I hope they were not contagious last week when I spent some time in the office.

I hope this cough doesn't hang around too long. Throat swelling and the irritation from the coughing tends to make it even more likely than usual that my esophagus will misbehave when I try to swallow.

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Wed, Jan 30, 2008

Vmware on Ubuntu WLAN problems

Posted at 6:08 pm MST to Code

VMWare Workstation on recent Ubuntu has always had problems. It reported that bridging was not available even though it was configured.

Today, while trying to get a network connection working more transparently for work, I found a note on one of the ubuntu forums that recommended loading the latest version of the madwifi driver. I followed the instructions from the thread, and the error went away: vmware loads much more cleanly now.

I will probably need to rebuild the driver whenever the kernel gets updated, until ubuntu catches up to the latest version of the driver.

Mind you, bridging still does not actually work with a wireless connection, but this gets it closer.

I found another thread? -- this time on the vmware forums -- that described how to patch vmware's vmnet module so it will talk to the WLAN. However, the prepatched module on offer is for vmware 6.0.1 and I am at 6.0.2.

I tried making the patch changes manually, but apparently did something wrong. Vmware barfed all over the place with strange errors after I rebuilt it with the patched module.

Next I'll try the packaged patch (which does things a bit differently) and see if that gives better results. According to comments later in the thread it should work with 6.0.2....

And it does. Yay. The Vmware guest is now bridged instead of NATed.

Aaaand the more direct connection doesn't seem to make the Cygwin Xfree server any happier. I've turned off the Windows firewall and made sure the 'hosts' files on both servers know about each other, and Cygwin is still refusing to connect. Time for more googling.

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Sun, Jan 27, 2008

Flour Techniques

Posted at 8:16 pm MST to Technology

Lots of different uses of flour this weekend.

Last night I made a pound cake. I used my bundt pan, and the cake did not come out of it intact. Little patches stuck, even though I greased the pan carefully and thoroughly. I don't think I have ever gotten a cake to come out of that pan intact, in all the years I have had this pan (25 years?), and I've about decided that it is the fault of the pan. I think I even tried Pam, once, without much luck. I think it is time to invest in a new bundt pan (and not the cheapest one on the rack this time).

This morning I made biscuits. The pound cake recipe uses buttermilk, and I always feel bad about wasting the rest of the quart, but buttermilk is not something we ever had in the house when I was growing up. The same goes for biscuits, actually: I learned to like them at a restaurant that served them with honey. If my Mom ever served biscuits, which I don't recall, they were 'poppin-fresh'.

The biscuits I made came out pretty well: they were nice and flaky and puffed up so much that the ones on the outside of the group sort of toppled over. (I only used 3/4 of the bakingpowder called for in the recipe, to adjust for the altitude...) I ate some with butter and some with honey and a couple with both, and still have some waiting in the breadbox.

I have the week's bread rising now.

And I have fresh pasta cooking and drying. I decided that yesterday's red sauce deserved homemade pasta, so I dug out the pasta machine (which hasn't been used since before I started travelling) and the pasta drying rack. According to Mario Batali and various cookbooks, the ratio for pasta should be 100 grams of flour per egg, but I think that is sea-level, soggy-climate flour. The pasta came out OK, but was almost impossible to knead by hand.

I think I need to ease back on the flour next time, which won't be for a while: I'm going to be freezing most of these noodles. I'm cooking the angel-hair-like stuff that came out of the machine's cutter, and freezing the parts of the batch that I put through the fettuccine cutter.

I don't think I'm ready to try to make ravioli with the noodle dough from the machine. I need more practice before I will be able to produce wide strips of noodle with parallel edges. I'm going to shift the machine's storage location to a more accessible location, though so it will be used more often. Maybe I'll get to ravioli sometime this year....

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Charlies

Posted at 7:44 pm MST to Media

Two stories about wild animals, living with people, both named Charlie.

First, the Daily Coyote blog has wonderful photographs of Charlie the coyote, who has lived with a human and a tomcat since he was 10 days old.

Second, a book I got from the Quality Paperback book club: A Buffalo in the House, by R. D.Rosen about a buffalo named Charlie who lives with a sculptor and her husband near Santa Fe and works as a model and buffalo ambassador..

One fascinating thing about both animals is how small they started out: Charlie the coyote was able to walk under the tomcat's belly (later, the tomcat was able to walk under Charlie's belly), and Charlie the buffalo is described as the size of a golden retriever and was brought home the first time in a dog crate.

Charlie the buffalo really did spend time in the house when he was a baby. And once when he was getting to be too big for the house, he snuck into the house and up the stairs and was found standing on the bed in the bedroom. There is a song (by Rolf Harris, my parents had one of his albums) about a herd of buffalos coming in the house and jumping on the bed... at least Charlie was just one buffalo.

I found the lyrics to the song "Two Buffalos" (they increase throught e verses by powers of two) here. For a long time growing up, we only had a few records in the house so I pretty well have the Rolf Harris albums lyrics memorized.

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Sat, Jan 26, 2008

Red Sauce

Posted at 2:05 pm MST to Technology

Today instead of making my usual microwave red sauce, I'm making a more traditional sauce. I'm using the bottom of the 6 quart enameled dutch oven, and I'm very pleased with it.

Getting the sauce out of the pot later may be a trick, considering how heavy the pot is. Incentive to get back to the free weights.

Instead of canned mushrooms and chipped garlic and onions, I'm using live ones and practicing my knife skills. So, setting up the mise en place --

Set the pot on a medium low burner.

Light a votive candle next to where you will be chopping the onion.

Get out the dried herbs and spices: bay leaf, parsley flakes, sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano, marjoram, fennel seeds. Whomp everything except the parsley flakes and bay leaf in the marble spice mortar before putting them in a small bowl.

Add extra virgin olive oil to the pot (don't put anything else in yet.

Mince 4 garlic cloves and put them into a tiny bowl.

Chop a medium onion into small dice and put it into the pot. (Note: the combination of letting the candle burn for a while before working on the onion and not cutting the onion root too enthusiastically worked very well. I could actually see the whole time I was cutting the onion.)

Rinse and stem 8 ounces of fresh mushrooms and run them through an egg slicer.

Open a can of organic diced tomatoes into a strainer over a bowl.

Continue sweating the onions until they are mostly soft, then add the garlic and let them sweat together for a few minutes.

Put a pound of ground buffalo into a bowl and tear it apart into small pieces with two forks. Put the meat into the pot and let it brown.

Add the herbs and stir them through the meat.

Add the mushrooms and put the lid on the pot for a couple of minutes. Then take the lid off for a few minutes to allow some of the liquid to evaporate.

Deglaze with a 187 ml bottle of Vendage 2000 Cabernet. Leave the lid off the pot so the liquid can cook down and be absorbed.

Stir in the diced tomatoes. let them cook for a few minutes.

Add two 6 oz. cans of tomato paste. Stir well to coat the chunks of meat, then add a 15 oz. can of tomato sauce. Stir thoroughly again. (One nice thing about cooking in a deep pot is that it's easy to stir things without them spattering everywhere.)

Lid briefly to bring the sauce up to temperature, stir and turn heat to low. Taste, and add a little kosher salt, if needed.

[While the sauce is cooking, put the juice drained from the diced tomatoes into a cup, add a few drops of Worcestershire, and nuke it. Yum.]

Now to choose the pasta to put it on... maybe some ziti: this is a robust sauce. I'm currently using some imported organic pasta that Costco had in stock. In the past, I've tried whole wheat pasta, but it never really tasted right. I'll take organic over whole wheat at this point. (I stopped gaining weight around the time I switched back to non-whole wheat pasta, which seems weird...)

In the future (when I have used up the cans of sauce in my pantry -- sometimes shopping at Costco can be a disadvantage) I will switch to using 2 cans of the diced tomatoes with their juice, without the can of sauce. Unless Costco starts carrying an organic sauce with more structure than the Contadina.

This current recipe swaps the wine for the diced tomato juice to make the flavors of the saucemore complex (some tomato flavors are alcohol-soluble). Also, to some extent, the olive oil replaces some of the fat that would be present if I were using beef instead of buffalo.

I did not add much salt to the sauce because I salt the pasta water, and usually serve it with grated parmesan. For this sauce, I will breakout the real, grate-it-yourself stuff.

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39.9 Percent

Posted at 11:30 am MST to Exercise

According to my weight-and-body-fat-percentage scale, my body fat percentage is below 40 for the first time in ages. That's with the measurement taken after my shower, per directions, so the skin on my feet was properly hydrated for the measurement.

I did several measurements. One was above 40, and two others were slightly lower, so I feel safe in claiming 39.9. (How you stand on the scale can make a big difference.)

I wonder if getting rid of most of the heel callouses -- so the sensor contact was with something approaching living flesh -- made a difference?

In any case, this is encouraging, since I haven't really been exercising much for the past week or so because of giving my hip time to heal. And I had (probably too much) pizza for dinner the last two nights in a row.

My weight is staying pretty stable, but that is OK if some of the fat is being replaced by muscle. I've noticed my belts are being a bit ambiguous about which notch they want to be on, which is also encouraging. Once the hip has stabilized a bit more, I'll start up the Abs Yoga again, which should also help on the belt-notch and fitting-into-jeans front.

Exercise for the past two days has been PT exercises followed by AM Yoga in the morning and PT exercises in the evening. I think even after the prescribed week, I'm going to keep doing the PT exercises before the AM Yoga and other workouts. Giving my hip a little extra encouragement to stay where it belongs is probably not a bad idea before I go stretching it in all sorts of directions.

Despite the fat, I'm not in too bad shape even compared with some times in my life when I was a lot thinner: I was just (after loosening up with yoga and a hot shower) able to come within about an inch of touching my toes. That is VERY good for me: the times in my life when I have been able to touch my toes at all have been few and far between. Having a petite body and tall arms and legs doesn't help.

Having very tight hamstrings doesn't help either the toe touching or the hip stability or the yoga. (My downward dog is pitiful at the moment -- good thing Rodney Yee can't see me out of the TV.) But I have figured out a place where I can do the legs-up-the-wall thing to stretch my hamstrings without causing a book avalanche. When my treadmill is folded up, it bottom will provide a nice stable surface to lean my heels against. And the treadmill is on the part of the floor that is over the basement, not the unheated crawlspace, which makes a big difference for these restorative poses where you are holding still and letting gravity work instead of warming yourself by moving.

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Fri, Jan 25, 2008

Nasty Cold Wind

Posted at 9:06 pm MST to Weather

It is very windy this evening, and it isn't a chinook: the temperature is only about 20 F. Unless I am misreading the thermometer in the dark and it is even colder.

I don't know how fast the wind is blowing, but when I got out of the car to get my mail on the way home from work, I got hit by a face full of gravel. Not dust. Not sand. Gravel.

I hope my glasses weren't scratched. They are less than a year old, and I usually can get two years' use out of a set of lenses.

It's going to be hard ot sleep tonight because of the noise.

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Thu, Jan 24, 2008

Second PT Appointment

Posted at 11:39 pm MST to Exercise

Anne was amazed by how much my hip has improved in just a week. She said last time she had to do 5 major adjustments and this time only 2 minor ones. It seems really strange for my overweight, couch-potato body to be described as "very healthy" by a health professional who means it.

I think I actually have a trick hip the way some people have trick shoulders. Once it gets put back into place everything else pretty much falls into line like a row of dominoes.

From the comments of Marti, my massage therapist, and Anne, the physical therapist, I get the impression that most people don't pay atttention to what is going on inside their bodies, and a lot of people's bodies reject change.

Anne gave me a couple of exercises to do to help the hip finish healing and keep it from going out again. Morning and evening for a week, then as needed. Time to go do them...

Tomorrow morning I'll do the PT exercises, then start working my way back into the 'AM Yoga' routine

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Pedegg

Posted at 9:38 am MST to Exercise

I don't often buy gadgets from TV commercials. I think the last one was a pair of strap wrenches for the kitchen use (opening jars, etc.) back in 2002, which were actually purchased at an "As seen on TV" store in a mall.

But a few weeks ago an advertisement for a gadget called the Pedegg showed up on one of the channels I watch, and it looked like something that was exactly what I had been wanting.

My heels had gotten very calloused, and the callouses were cracked and gnarly and peeling. Ordinary heel files didn't make much of a dent in the problem in reasonable amounts of time, and spread skin shavings around.

I kept wishing there was a microplane style thing that would take off the callous more effectively, and a way to keep the shavings from going all over the place.

The Pedegg (mine arrived yesterday) does exactly what I wanted. It uses microplane-like cutters to take down the callous quickly, and catches the shavings inside itself to be discarded later.

In just a few minutes, callouses I had been struggling to control for months -- unsuccessfully -- were almost completely gone. If I wanted to wear pantyhose, I could do it without destroying them on the callouses.

And some sore spots on my left heel are gone. That heel had been in very bad shape. I think it calloused worse because the circulation was messed up on that side. And because the leg has been swollen and less flexible, it was hard to work on the callouses long enough with the ordinary heel file.

Now I have the Pedegg, and the flexibility and circulation of the left leg are improving since the PT session last week. It's still visibly different from the right one, but not as bad as it was. I can see some definition in the foot and ankle, and fold the leg underneath me in a way I haven't done in a while.

I had a massage session yesterday evening and Marti was amazed by the improvement. My legs are about the same length now, and the thigh and hips have lost most of their knots. The calf is improving, too, but still has lots of sore spots.

I have another PT session later this morning. I don't expect a lot more improvement, but I want to get some exercises that will help prevent the hip from getting out of whack again, and permission to get back into my routine of yoga and weightlifting. I've been being very careful for the past week.

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Wed, Jan 23, 2008

Clutter

Posted at 10:21 pm MST to Miscellaneous

The folks at Making Light are talking about de-cluttering one's life and environment.

There is no way to de-clutter my house in absolute terms: I own about five times as many books and DVDs as I have proper shelf space for. And about one and a half to two times as many as I can cram into my bookshelves if I take maximum advantage of the volume available. A twelve inch deep shelf will hold three rows of paperbacks, with more laid across the tops of the rows up to the shelf above.

A 10 inch shelf will hold three rows of paperbacks if you pack them really solid....

However, I have made some progress at decluttering spaces that were becoming unusable.

The weight bench has been disinterred and is now usable.

My kitchen cupboards are gradually becoming organized (I gave my cleaning ladies some kitchen stuff today, including a cast iron griddle I never use and my old rice cooker, also seldom used because it is not smart enough to handle the altitude.

The rice cooker (from Costco) came with extra steamer trays, though so the ladies can use it for tamales and such. Tamales are not part of my culinary heritage. And the new smart rice cooker that knows how to handle the altitude also has a steamer tray that is more than sufficient for one person quantities. For that matter, most stock pots and spaghetti pots come with steamer inserts these days: if I ever needed to steam a lot of stuff at once, I could do some batches on the stovetop... on multiple burners.

I have a kitchen cart that lives in my dining room and provides an extra drawer and some cupboard space. When I got home from Boston the first time (the week before my surgery in 2005) some books got unpacked onto the top of the cart and have not moved until this week.
Now they are on a bookshelf that was cleared along with the weight bench excavation. And my pretty new Mario Batali pots, which are really too large for my cupboards, are sitting on the cart top being decorative.

Since the ladies were coming today, I also managed to beat back the tsunami of books and paper that was trying to engulf the coffee table. But that is mostly cheating: the papers got moved to the dining room table, where they still need to be sorted and either filed or discarded. Maybe I'll clear some tabletop when I work on my taxes...most of the papers I need are somewhere in that pile, but a couple have not arrived yet.

The books got added to the pile filling the wingback chair, which is going to collapse under the weight one of these days. The side tables in the living room are also buried a couple of feet deep under books and DVDs...

Besides the papers in the dining room, the next candidates for de-cluttering are:

The baker's rack that holds my flour canisters, two shelves of cookbooks and one shelf of miscellaneous stuff. The cookbooks need a bigger chunk of that third shelf, and all the little booklets that came with various gadgets (which make up a fair amount of the 'miscellaneous') desperately need to be sorted and organized.

The lower corner cabinet in my kitchen needs more work, though clearing out the rice cooker helps.

Visible nonbook clutter in the bedroom (minor) and the computer room/study (ack)

Closets, which are mostly stuffed. Clearing stuff out of the closets would free up space for other stuff to migrate into.

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Mon, Jan 21, 2008

Customer Portal

Posted at 9:44 pm MST to Code

I've finally gotten back to work on the customer portal project for the office.

Logins are now doing what they are supposed to, and one field that needs to accept multiple selections from a list seems to be working properly.

I still need to get some fields and records to update each other, so they will be kept in sync when various values are updated. Then I can hand the project over to the people who will be loading the data. I expect that they will ask for some feature tweaks, but what I have is enough to get them going.

I think a couple of the updatable fields will be changing to always and only be updated by the application, not explicitly by users. But I may need a menu item to force a recalculation of some of those fields.

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Sun, Jan 20, 2008

Knots (misposted -- originally Jan 2, 2008, 7:04pm)

Posted at 8:49 pm MST to Exercise

I awakened this morning feeling knots in my left calf and hip. I did some stretching while I was still in bed, before I got up to do my yoga and weights, and I could feel the tightness from my heel to the lower ribs on that side. I'm not sure whether the knots are a reaction to the changes I've been trying to make, or are just more noticeable because the stuff around them is shifting.

I was able to get a little farther in the abs tape today, but still not very far. But progress is progress.

Weights today: 10# each hand upward rowing and bench press, 5# each hand butterflies, 5# overhead pulls to work on the range of motion. 10 reps of everything. Those weights and rep counts are still very light for the rowing and pressing, but with everything unbalanced I need to take it slow.

If my legs are different lengths, it means my illeosacral joint is out of allignment again. Too much strain anywhere will pop my lower back, which I do NOT need. The current weights will be fine for butterflies and overhead pulls for a while, but if I'm not too stiff tomorrow I'll increase the weights for the bench presses and rowing to 15# for each hand on Thursday (because I work alone without a spotter, I use dumb-bells for almost everything.)

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No Veal

Posted at 8:47 pm MST to Technology

Frittura Dousa is traditionally the starch in a course that includes sausage, breaded veal cutlets, and sauteed carrots and spinach. I don't have veal. I have never seen veal in a Colorado supermarket in all of the years I have lived here: this is beef cattle country, not dairy country, and veal tends to be a by-product of dairying.

I'm very pleased with the way the fritters came out this time. Instead of trying to put them into the pan immediately after I dunked them in flour, egg and plain breadcrumbs, I set them on a plate while I worked on breading more of them. I think the delay let the crust sort of consolidate before the pieces went into the oil.

I only remember Mom and Nonna using two layers: egg and breadcrumbs. But I make fried, breaded anything so rarely I need the help of the flour to get it to work at all.

Nonna always mixed the last of the eggs with the last of the breadcrumbs and made a sort of scrambled egg thing after all of the fritters and veal were cooked. I'm not bothering with that step.

The sausages were Johnsonville Mild Italian. I prefer the Sweet Italian, but these are OK. They will go well with my bland batch of mac and cheese as well as with the Frittura Douse.

I think I cooked things in the wrong order... Cooking the sausage after the fritters and before the carrots would flavor the pan for the carrots. And I'm going to swish the spinach through the sausage pan to sort of deglaze it before I put the spinach in the fridge: the plain spinach I ate with my meal was kind of boring and not tied into the rest of the meal as well as if it had been sauteed instead of steamed.

To save refrigerator space, I put the uneaten sausages into the same Corningware as the spinach. The carrots get their own Pyrex container: I cooked a whole pound of baby carrots, so they will be used in several meals.

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Sat, Jan 19, 2008

Mac and Cheese

Posted at 8:49 pm MST to Technology

I'm celebrating my repaired stove burner by making the Frittura Dousa that I had originally planned for Christmas or New Year's. I did the first-day prep today.

I also made some macaroni and cheese from scratch (which really needs both large burners to do it right):

400 degree oven 

1/2 pound elbow noodles cooked al dente

4 Tbs salted butter
3 Tbs flour
1 can evaporated milk
Vermont cheddar, asiago and American cheeses
water

breadcrumbs
grated Parmesan

Combine beschamel/cheese sauce and noodles in round casserole
top with crumbs and Parmesan
Bake 15 minutes

I used a microplane grater instead of the box grater for the cheese, this time. The cheese tends to scatter more, without the box to contain it, but it grates faster.

The beschamel came out well. The new risotto/saucier works great, and the porcelain interior makes cleaning out cheese sauce much easier than it would be in a steel pot. The main problem is that the pot is so heavy: I used a ladle to scoop out the sauce into the casserole instead of pouring it. (The free weight work may help, once I work my way back to meaningfull weights.)

But the final result was a bit bland. Next time I need to add more salt to the sauce, and maybe some white pepper. Possibly a little Parmesan in the sauce as well as the topping, too.

And less breadcrumbs and more cheese for the topping. I don't remember my Mom using a crumb topping at all on her mac and cheese (which was based on pure American cheese, not a blend) so a little goes a lot way for me.

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Fri, Jan 18, 2008

Knife Skills

Posted at 11:06 am MST to Technology

I have signed up for a one-day Knife Skills workshop at the Culinary School of the Rockies at 10:00am Saturday March 29. I'm glad they have added this to their schedule. Last year the Knife workshops were 2 days (10 to 2 an Saturday and Sunday, which pretty well wrecks the weekend), and conflicted with Farmer's Market besides.

I attended an evening workshop on Mediterranean cooking at the School with Nanette several years ago that was a lot of fun. I spent a my lot of time chopping nuts: I think 3/4 of the recipes we did had chopped nuts in them. Including the baklava, of course. Yum. I need to reorganize my cookbooks, anyway. Maybe I'll find the recipe booklet from that workshop.

I first encountered baklava at the "Feast of Simple Fare" (whhich wasn't particularly simple) put on once or twice a year by the Society for Creative Anachronism in Connecticut, when I was living in Connecticut and in the SCA. I once had a mild allergic reaction to the baklava at one of the feasts, though, which was disconcerting. I suspect the honey contained some pollen from something I'm allergic to. Fortunately, that's the only time I've ever had a reaction to baklava or honey, and I'm usually okay with tree nuts. I doubt there were any peanuts in the SCA baklava: not authentically period enough.

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Thu, Jan 17, 2008

First PT Appointment

Posted at 8:09 pm MST to Exercise

Anne Hanks does PT, not chiropractic, which is nice: slow subtle adjustments instead of the 'wham' 'crunch' you get with a chiropractor. She said she adjusted my third lumbar vertebra slightly, and adjusted my pelvis. I can tell it made a difference: my leg felt too long when I walked on it doing some shopping, and the pattern of sore spots in my hip and leg have changed.

I'm ordered to let the hip flexors have tinme to heal before I stretch them with the yoga or free weights. Maybe I'll try the treadmill tomorrow.

And I'm supposed to spend about 15 minutes a day with m feet up a wall. 45 degree angle to start. I'm going to go do that now.

I have a followup appointment next Thursday.

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Wed, Jan 16, 2008

Unexpected Day Off

Posted at 8:39 pm MST to Technology

My work schedule has evaporated. The logistics of escorting me (because I don't have an official badge, after 2 months of working at the site) had gotten annoying enough to the people doing the escorting, that they told me not to come back until I have a badge. At the rate things are going I will be moving on to my next contract (which begins the 28th) before they get themselves organized to provide the badge.

I took advantage of not being scheduled to work in the middle of the day and had lunch with Nanette, at our favorite Mexican restaurant.

Then we ran a couple of errands. We visited McGuckin's Hardware, which provided instructions as well as bolts for a project Nanette had been struggling with: besides their promise "If we don't have it you don't need it", McGuckin's also has actual knowledgeable and helpfull people in the various departments. A gentleman in the fasteners department recommended the right bolts for Nanette's project and explained how to use them.

McGuckin's is also the kind of place where you go in looking for a couple of bolts and end up spending $50 on neat stuff. I got an over-the-door robe hook for my bathroom and a good 4 inch paring knife.

The new knife is from Messermeister. I have their 8 inch chef knife and 8 inch deba, and love both of them, and my existing paring knives have uncomfortable, bulky handles.

An embarrassing number of my old knives (especially my travelling knives) are from the company that makes Ginsu knives. The culinary hack-saw known as the Ginsu can be useful for attacking frozen food, and they make wonderful breadknives (I wore out two serrated bread knives from Chicago Cutlery before I switched to the Ginsus). But the other knives are pretty useless, except for one thin tapered knife (possibly meant to be a really oddly shaped boning knife?) that I use for slashing the tops of bread loaves before baking (I have never found any other use for it.) I think the deep serrations on the Ginsu-ish blades are designed for righthanders: normal non-serrated blades are less biased.

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Tue, Jan 15, 2008

Hip

Posted at 11:00 pm MST to Exercise

I wish I could figure out when my hip went out. I suspect that the length of time it has been out will affect how difficult it is to put it back into place.

I can clearly feel that it is wrong when I try to do yoga or lift weights, but it isn't particularly painful in general, so I didn't realize it was out until I noticed the swelliing in that leg a week or so before Christmas.

The chiropractor appointment is thursday morning. I hope she can fix things.

1. pounds for the bench press today, still taking it easy because my balance is off and I don't want to stress the hip. I did neck stretches, too, for the first time in ages. And several reps each of three or four different moves with the five-pound hand weights, exploring the range of motion. The scar tissue is gradually stretching. If the hip wasn't complicating matters, I'd be making pretty good progress, I think.

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Sun, Jan 13, 2008

Turkey Risotto

Posted at 7:17 pm MST to Technology

If you want a dish that takes FOR EV ER to cook, try brown rice risotto at 6000 feet. But it's smelling delicious, though.

The new risotto pan is very nice, and the front burner on my stove magically decided to cooperate.

I sort of compromised between my Nonna's recipe and the recipes fro Mario Batali that came with the pan.

 
1/4 cup EV Olive oil
1 medium onion chopped small and cooked until translucent
3 smashed cloves of garlic
1 cup brown rice cooked in the oil for a few minutes
a small pinch of salt to help the rice cook
180 ml of White Zinfandel
1 quart hot turkey stock, added very gradually
2 cups turkey in small chunks (mostly dark meat)
1/2 tsp rosemary, pounded in a mortar before adding
1 Tbsp double-strength tomato paste

2 small cans of mushrooms added about midway through cooking

hot water added gradually after all the stock is in

about a cup of grated Parmesan cheese added at the end and stirred in

serve with more cheese, and fresh ground pepper on top, and salt if desired 

The wine is one of those little bottles that come in 4-packs: a 1998 Glen Ellen that's been in my pantry for ages.

I used a trick from Cook's Illustrated: keep an open flame going while chopping onions to reduce crying.

Also a technique from Alton Brown: cut the onion in half from the top to the root, and slice each half at angles from top to bottom without severing the root, so the pieces will hold together when you are slicing across them for the chop. My knife skills generally suck, but this chop came out less amateurish than usual.

Note that there is a LOT of salt in the Parmesan, hence the limited amounts used elsewhere in the recipe.

I need to find a pot rack or something. I really have no good place in my kitchen for my nice new pans.

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Organic Rats

Posted at 1:32 pm MST to Technology

According to an October article in the Curious Cook column in the New York Times, rats can tell the difference between biscuits baked with organic flour and biscuits baked with regular flour. They prefer the organic ones.

Also, stressed basil plants have more aromatic compounds than unstressed plants, and scientists have found a way to threaten the plants without necessarliy having anything chew on them, by soaking the seeds and roots with a couple of doses of chitin extract (chitosin).

I wonder if doing that works like a vaccine, getting the plant's immune system into higher gear in advance of any attacks. It seems possible, since flavorful compounds are part of the plant's defenses mechanisms. A plant with its weapons loaded and ready should be more resistant than one that needs to ramp up production of its ammunition.

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Sat, Jan 12, 2008

Spice Tins

Posted at 3:01 pm MST to Technology

I really like the label maker (by Brother). It works well, and the blister pack even had a sort of zipper so I didn't need heavy equipment to get the gadget out of its package. The sample cartridge included was black type on white, but I bought cartridges of back on clear to use on the silvery tins.

The new tins are filled labelled in three places. Today's date is on the bottom near one edge, where it won't get covered by the velcro. And the name of the spice is on the lid and on the side of the tin. I put one label on the jelly jar of pickling salt on my counter, too, just for safety's sake. Also a couple of Republic of Tea tins with their label stripped that are holding other companies' teas. I will probably label some of my Tupperware canisters, too, so I don't need to open them to see what is inside.

I had ordered 4 8-ounce tins, 10 4-ounce tins and 20 2-ounce tins, and that was about right. At the moment there are 2 unused 8-ounce tins and 3 unused of each of the other sizes. I may need to order some more of the smaller ones when I order herbs (this order was mostly non-leafy spices).

I managed to spill the Yellow Mustard seeds all over the floor, so I will need to re-order those. At least, if I had to spill something, it was the cheapest item in the list, and one I don't use much.

The two 8-ounce tins are being used for Mayan Coca and Crystallized Ginger. I didn't order enough of either of them this time to need such large tins, but I expect to buy larger quantities when I restock. The crystallized ginger is wonderful: good and strong with just enough sweetness add, and not too fibrous. The cocoa includes chile, almond, true cinnamon and allspice, and needs to be strained before serving. I made my sample cup with honey, then added some sugar too: the actual mix is unsweetened and its hard to remember just how much sugar is added to commercial cocoas.

The 4-ounce tins are Basil Flakes (1 ounce by weight takes a LOT of space), Cinnamon (Cassia) Sticks, Star Anise (which doesn't pack tightly), and three blends: Ancho Chili Powder, and whole-spice mixes for Madras Curry and Garam Masala. I also put Poppy Seeds into a 4-ounce tin in case I decide to order larger quantities in the future: the single ounce I purchased will do as a topping for rolls or bread, but it would be a bit skimpy for recipes that use poppy seeds as an ingredient by the tablespoonful.

The small tins are:

Allspice Berries
Anise Seed
Green Cardamom Pods
Cayenne Powder
Fennel Seed
Whole Cloves
Grains of Paradise
Cumin Seed
Juniper Berries
Mace Powder
Mustard (the yellow seeds that spilled)
Whole Nutmegs
Paprika (Sweet Hungarian)
Smoked Paprika (Spanish)
Turmeric Powder
Ginger  (cut, for use in tea)
Ginger Powder

I'm not sure what Grains of Paradise are like. They've been mentioned a few times on Food Network, and I thought they might be fun to experiment with.

The smoked paprika is also an experiment, but I've seen it called for in LOTS of recipes on Food Network.

I don't know why I missed ordering Coriander. I'll add that to the next order along with the replacement Yellow Mustard. Also Fenugreek seeds and Sesame seeds, which I had in my spice cupboard but didn't include in the first order.

I don't know if I would use Dill seeds if I had them in stock... but I obviously won't use them if I don't have them handy (and not buried in the back of a cupboard). I need to think about this, and maybe get some dill seed when Nanette has it at the market, to experiment.

And I need to order Peppercorns eventually: in the past few years I've bought pepper grinders faster than I used the pepper in them, but I suspect the pepper that comes in grinders is not in the best condition. And the mixes of 4 kinds of pepper (black, white, red and green) are pretty, but kind of miss the point of having 4 different peppers: you lose the subtle differences between the varieties. I think I actually own enough pepper grinders to have one for each kind, but I'm not sure I'm obsessive enough to sort the peppercorns that came in the newer grinders that are still mostly full.

The other leafy herbs I use in my spaghetti sauce will need to be upgraded eventually, but I use those enough that packages on my shelves are still usable. (I included Basil in this last order because I was almost out of it. Turkish Bay Leaves, Rosemary, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, Sage, Garlic Granules, Onion Flakes, Parsley Flakes. And possibly lemon peel and orange peel, but those should wait for an autumn order: the holiday breads will have more kick if the peel granules are fresher. I should get some celery seed at the same time and stop using supermarket Poultry Seasoning in my turkey stuffing.

I need to wait until I have a large order of the herbs and spices, so the shipping costs don't overwhelm the cost of the actual herbs. And I need to find a tin of Coleman's mustard: no sense in paying shipping on something I should be able to find locally, but the dry mustard in my rack was ancient.

Herbs to consider for the future, if I find myself wanting to try recipes that call for any of them:

Tarragon
Savory
Saffron
Chervil
Cardamon Seed as opposed to the pods
True Cinnamon

Mints: (Pepper and/or Spear. I use the extracts in baking. Do I need the leaf for lamb, etc.? I love Moroccan food, and Mataam Fez is closed, so I should probably try learning to do it).

Roses and Lavender flowers (depends on which cuisines I decide to explore: Moroccan and Turkish will probably need the roses. I think Provencal uses lavender.)

I need to contemplate my cookbooks. I need to get my stove repaired or replaced.

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Fri, Jan 11, 2008

More Cookware

Posted at 9:47 pm MST to Technology

My current customer is really annoying: I've been working there since Thanksgiving week, and the contract ends at the end of this month, and they have just started the paperwork to get me a proper badge and logins. Without those, I have to be 'escorted' constantly, so I can't get anything done unless they have people available to type passwords and be physically near me.

Today I got to the front lobby at 8:30. They didn't come out to escort me in until 9:00am, and then they said "Oh, we forgot, there is an all-hands meeting from 9:30 to at least 10:30 and we are going to a department lunch at 11:30, and there will probably be no one in the cubes this afternoon."

Gah. I spent 20 minutes checking last night's builds and tweaking an integration config spec. Then I went out to my company's office (which is only a few blocks away) and spent some time discussing the state of the company with Shawn while I waited to hear if I should go back to the customer site.

The answer (at about 11 o'clock, their meeting ran long) was "No" so I went shopping. Malls are actually rather pleasant at lunchtime on a Friday in the off-season. I stopped at a cooking store and a local appliance store before I went to the mall. I found out about the existence of the appliance store because one of their vans was just ahead of me at a stoplight on my (supposed) way to work earlier in the morning.

I had pizza slices in the food court for lunch. I think I was reacting to yesterday when I did not dare buy pizza because I did not think I would be able to swallow it successfully when eating in a hurry. Today I was able to take my time.

Last time I bought decent quality cookware I wrote that I wanted to add a good enameled-cast-iron Dutch oven and a saucier to my equipment.

It turns out that chef Mario Batalli (one of the American Iron Chefs on Food Network) has a line of enameled-cast-iron that includes a 6-quart oven and a 4 quart saucier/risotto pan that are good quality but much more reasonably priced that the alternatives. (As in, about half the price of the LeCreuset ovens and All-Clad sauciers I had looked at.)

The Mario Batalli oven is the same diameter as the 5.5 quart LeCreuset oven, just a little deeper, and it has little condensation tips sticking down inside the lid for even basting, which the French oven from LeCreuset lacks. The one I got at What's Cooking is a color called 'chianti' (because cinnamon isn't Italian). It will look nice in my green and white kitchen. The green shade ("pesto") that is available for the Mario Batalli cast iron is too yellow-y and would clash.

I got the saucier (in white) at Crate & Barrel. It's larger than I had been thinking of, and will be a little slower to react to burner changes because of the cast iron. But if I switch my cooktop to gas the difference in responsiveness should more than cancel out. And risotto is actually something I make regularly, and it will benefit from the deeper pan to prevent spattering. (I need to defrost to defrost some of the turkey and turkey broth I froze after Thanksgiving... It's time to make turkey risotto.)

My acquaintance Caroline (she's the mother of a classmate of one of Nanette's kids) keeps saying that she needs an extra deep lasagna pan. She needs to go to Crate and Barrel: the Mario Batali line has a 9x13 lasagna pan that's an inch deeper than normal.

While I was at Crate and Barrel I also picked up a coffee grinder to use for attacking whole grain spices. My order of spices from World Spice Merchants arrived Wednesday, but they were out of stock on the grinders they offer. I ended up with a CuisineArt grinder which was a bit less expensive than the Kitchenaid model offered by World Spice.

I also have received a supply of tins from Specialty Bottle that I will use to store the spices away from light and air, and last weekend I stopped in at Michael's (velcro and other mounting supplies) and OfficeMax (a label maker). So this weekend I am planning a kitchen craft project to put the spices in the tins, label them, and set up a mounting system like the one Alton Brown uses.

Some people use magnetic strips to mount spice tins, but I spent too many years working with floppies. I don't like having random magnets around. I prefer Alton's velcro approach. But I'm going to try to mount some of my tins outside of my cupboards.

Now if I could just find the size and shape of free-standing pot-rack I need, so my pretty new enameled cookware would have a place to live.

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Thu, Jan 10, 2008

Cranky

Posted at 9:39 pm MST to Miscellaneous

Two very busy days.

A full day of work yesterday, followed by a stop at Costco to pick up my med refills and a two hour session at my massage therapist. And preceded by some strenuous housework: I hauled 6 12-gallon tubs of manga books down to the basement and did some other reorganizing of the house in the absence of the holiday decorations. (The house seems very dark without the lights.)

I am noticing the problems in my left hip and leg more as the rest of me is get loosened up and stretched out. On Monday when I tried a yoga leg lift (part of the ABS yoga routine) something went 'twang in my left thigh. Marti says it is the IT band (IlioTibial) and agrees I should probaly not do those exercises while my leg is still tweaked. I don't want to mangle something by straining the soft tissues while the bones are out of allignment.

This afternoon, I felt a couple of odd twinges in my hip, as if things were trying to change position and not quite able to stay there. I'll take some Advil before bed: on one occasion in the past my hip pulled back into position during the night once the inflammation was knocked down.

It actually seems really odd to have my hip out and not have lower back pain. Despite the gradual fading of my exercise routines during the years of travel, I haven't completely lost the benefits of my few years of activity. The muscles in my back are still strong enough to keep the tweaked hip from pulling the iliosacral joint out with it.

Today started with AM yoga and weight lifting. Then bill-paying, and time on the telephone. I made an appointment with a chiropractor/physical therapist to try to do something about the bad hip.

Then I spent way too much time on the phone with the organizational incompetents at Xcel. The fix to my address in their records -- which was promised for December -- still has not happened. And neither, of course has the change of my power from overhead to underground. Xcel is not just a case of their right hand not knowing what their left is doing. I think they are a centipede...

I eventually left a message to tell Ross, my electrician to get in touch with one of Xcel's departments, and headed out to squeeze as many errands as possible into the time before I had to be at my customer site.

I ate lunch in the waiting room at the place where they test cars' emissions.

Then I spent a long afternoon at work. I got a lot accomplished, but I was tired enough that I forgot to stop at the dry cleaners on the way home.

At this point, I am waiting to hear from Ross and Xcel, and also from the customer support department for my timeshare company. (At least the chiropractor returned my call promptly.)

It doesn't help in all this that my cellphone doesn't work inside my customer site. But I haven't received any voice mails on either the cell or the landline. I even tested the recorder on the landline and verified that it is working properly (the machine was flaky a few months ago, but I figured out that it is fussy about having it's clock reset after power outages).

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Candy Pelennor Fields

Posted at 8:22 pm MST to Media

The people who did the candy Battle of Helm's Deep last year have done a candy Siege of Minas Tirith and Battle of the Pelennor Fields this year. (I got the link from Andrew Wheeler).

The detail is amazing. So (again) is their candy budget. The mumakil are especially impressive (and have 'circus peanut' bodies, which seem oddly appropriate for elephant-ish creatures).

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Tue, Jan 08, 2008

Shadow Unit

Posted at 10:42 pm MST to Media

Oooh. Shiny!

A group of SF writers (Elizabeth Bear, Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, and Sarah Monette) have started an online fictional serialized creation about an FBI unit focussing on 'anomalous' crimes.

According to Elizabeth Bear's Live Journal "Shadow Unit is, more or less, the website for a serial drama in internet form. Or possibly it's a fan site for a TV show that doesn't exist."

The introductory bits that already exist look very good. The fiction kicks off in February. Something to look forward to.

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Eagle

Posted at 8:56 pm MST to Miscellaneous

Yesterday morning, as I stood by the kitchen counter eating breakfast (yes, I was running a little late) a very large bird flew down to my neighbor's power pole and sat on the top of it. As it settled itself, I saw that it had a white head.

I've seen hawks frequently up here. The barn cats that wandered by when there was still a farm next door would always duck when one flew over. They seemed to have a lot of Siamese genes. I'm sure that was partly founder effect, but the Siamese coloring made them sort of cougar-colored (or dead-grass colored) and I suspect they found it useful as camouflage.

And the owl that showed up a while ago is still frequenting the neighborhood. I've seen it flying around a few times when I came home just at dusk.

But this is the first time I've actually seen a bald eagle this close to the house. I've noticed that there is a new prarie dog colony in a nearby field that never had one before, which may be attracting the eagle. Prairie dogs are a good size for eagle snacks, and I've noticed before that the eagles that winter in this area tend to hang out near prairie dog colonies.

Back in 1990ish, the area where my company's office is now was just being developed. There were roads and light posts, but fewer buildings, and a lot more prairie dogs. I was working in a building about a block from where our office is, and often saw bald eagles sitting on the light poles next to the street lights whe I drove to work. It's impressive to see a bird that needs a perch that big.

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Sun, Jan 06, 2008

'Scottish Plays'

Posted at 7:15 pm MST to Media

On Neil Gaiman's site, I found links to some wonderfulessays by Teller (of Penn & Teller) about a truly kickass production of Macbeth that he is co-directing in New Jersey. The first relevant essay is dated 12/24/2006, and the performances will begin this month, so they cover a lot of the design and development of the production. And a lot of the joy of creativity.

They are doing all of the magic in the play as magic, all of the violence as violence. Like a horror movie on stage.

I wish I could see the production.

Earlier this week I spent a lot of time watching anime videos. I prefer to watch them subtitled, with the original Japanese dialog, which keeps me from working on the computer at the same time (which is how I watch most English language shows), so my arms had time to heal some of the accumulated RSI.

One of the series I watched was called "Ayakashi -- Samurai Horror Tales". It was an anthology of three arcs, each with different designers. The second arc, designed by Yoshitaka Amano (one of Japan's premiere horror illustrators), is Yotsuya Ghost Story.

In addition to portraying the story within the classic Kabuki play 'Yotsuya Kaidan', the anime tells the story about the Kabuki play (it purports to be narrated by the writer of the Kabuki play). 'Yotsuya Kaidan' is the Scottish Play of Japan: it is believed to be cursed (actors and production staff die, theaters burn down...), which is a little odd since the story is only very, very loosely based on a historical story about real people. (The anime mentions the few historical details that are known.)

Despite the risks the play has always been very popular, so it keeps being re-staged and adapted in various theatrical forms. Praying at a shrine once frequented by the heroine of the story is supposed to provide some protection...

After contemplating and portraying many layers of story and history: of the play itself and of the story in the play, the anime suggests that the curse exists because the audience wants it to exist, because the story is so very powerful. It's got everything: murders with swords and poisons, betrayals, mistaken identities, inadvertent incest, people being eaten by hordes of rats ... I wonder how they manage the rats on stage.

I assume the creators of the anime visited the Yotsuya family shrine.

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Futon Flip

Posted at 10:32 am MST to Exercise

Yesterday my exercise was mostly the little bit of snow shovelling I did (good thing I got the path cut through that drift: it's snowing again this morning).

Today my exercise, other than the AM Yoga, was reorganizing my living room sofa, which is a futon. Because the futon is mostly stuffed with cotton, it tends to get packed down over time. The end where I always sit, next to the reading lamp, had become very hollowed out.

This morning I laid the futon frame flat and flipped the futon end for end, so I would be sitting on a part of the mattress that is still puffy. Then the frame didn't want to go back into sofa mode, so I had to drag the mattress off it anyway, reformat it, and drag the mattress back on. I think the problem was partly that the frame was stiff from never being exercised, and partly that I was asking the futon to bend the opposite way from what it was used to.

My hip is complaining a bit at the new state of things, which is probably a good sign. My pelvis is being held at a different angle than it is used to.

I should probably think about buying a new futon mattress and cover some time this year. The frame is metal and only a couple of years old, but the mattress is much older. According to GnuCash, the futon with the original frame was paid for at the end of June 2001, the new frame was at the end of December 2005. (I like having all of my financial records on-line.) One funny thing about the purchases: they were made in the same building, but to two different futon companies.

The original frame, which was wood, literally fell apart one day when I sat down on the sofa. The glue had dried out over the years and when some of the joints fell apart and the platform fell, some of the wooden members broke. Ordinary wood glue is really not designed for this climate.

Another change I made to my environment this weekend was putting another blanket on the waterbed. This tends to make it a little warm for the rest of me (even when I'm not having hot flashes), but this morning I could feel that the left leg was liking the extra warmth. I could feel the knots in my calf and hip, but they didn't tighten into painful cramps as they sometimes have done recently. They almost seemed to be relaxing a little.

I'm beginning to suspect that the one-leg-shorter-than-the-other business is a sign that I should visit a chiropractor. I think that hip needs a more drastic adjustment than Marti can perform. And I suspect the circulation in that leg is not really going to improve while the hip joint if out of position. The odd thing is, I'm not really having any lower back pain, which I would expect if the illeosacral joint was out of whack. Lower back pain usually accompanies the left-leg-too-short symptom and provides the signal that I need one of my rare visits to a chiropractor or physical therapist. I wonder what's going on this time that's different.

The sun's out again, but there are still clouds around the horizon. I think I'm going to do a little shopping before the weather closes in.

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Sat, Jan 05, 2008

Wind and Snow

Posted at 9:03 pm MST to Weather

A year ago this weekend, we had the ground blizzard that put five foot snow drifts across my driveway that did not go away for weeks.

This year, we've had smaller amounts of snow at any one time, and the winds are true chinook snow-eaters instead of being cold. I ended up with a two foot tall drift between my house and the driveway, but the past two days of warm weather and strong winds softened it enough that I was able to chop a path through it this morning. And now the winds and sun have melted the path mostly down to the dirt.

Last year the strong winds were cold, and just turned the drifts to the consistency of concrete.

They are predicting more snow for this coming week, but if the weather patterns this year keep following the more normal pattern of alternating precipitation and melting that they have shown so far, we will be in good shape for the year. The winter shows signs of being far more comfortable than last year, and unless things go abnormally dry for the next few months, we will not need to worry about a drought in the summer.

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Thu, Jan 03, 2008

XO (the OLPC laptop) compared to Harry Potter

Posted at 9:09 pm MST to Technology

It has arrived.

Weight 3 pounds 2 3.8 ounces without the AC adapter.

Weight of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix hardcover: 2 pounds 11 ounces

Dimensions (XO, closed): 9.25 x 10 x 1.25 inches

Dimensions (Harry Potter): 6.25 x 9.25 x 2.2 inches

The part of the screen that folds up when you open it is very similar in area to Harry Potter pages, about 6x9. The screen area is 6 inches x 4.5 inches, and the main text blocks on the Harry Potter pages are 4.25 x 7.

The 'ears' that stick up when you open it are very cute. It's a sort of Pokemon laptop. I need to give it a suitable name for my network.

The screen is very clear and is supposed to be rotatable both physically and in terms of the orientation of the text on the screen. I need to invest in a SD memory chip and fill it with books from Project Gutenberg and elsewhere. This will be a nice e-reader (and a good airport/airplane machine, with its long battery life). I need to look up how to put it in ebook mode, and find out how to shut down the transmitters for 'airplane' mode.

The keyboard is about 8 inches by 3, and the touchpad area (which is supposed to eventually support drawing) is quite large. It supports an extended Latin character set with about every diacritical mark I've ever heard of and all the special characters needed for Western European languages. Even upside down question marks and exclamation points for Spanish and the double pointy French quotes. I need to look into making the keyboard of my regular laptop behave like the XO laptop as much as possible: once I get used to typing diacritics on the XO, it will be annoying to have my other Linux keyboards behave differently.

There are other keyboard layouts available, and there is information on-line about switching to Thai or Russian or Ethiopian or Arabic or other supported languages. Apparently, you can set it up to cycle through any 4 supported languages, though I'm not sure whether the US international machines actually support right-to-left text yet. This seems to be the current list: English (US international); Spanish (Argentine); Portuguese (Brazilian); Amharic (Ethiopic); Arabic; West African; French; Thai; Urdu; Cyrillic; Turkish; Nepali; Mongolian; Kazakh; Devanagari; Uzbek; Pashto; Dari.

I should probably dust off my college Russian textbooks and do some playing. Mongolian is on the current list: I should take a look at that. And I wonder what the 'West African' layout looks like. (Nanette would like that one.)

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