Weekly Report # 8?

A cold breeze swept in off the ocean, carrying the smell of salt water and seaweed.  The funeral pyre burned defiantly in the darkness.  Silently, the Vikings rowed away from the shore.

Minnow Report:

She's on the farm.  She's staying there.  She's happy...what am I supposed to do?

The Kid Report:

Very mom-clingy.  Very desirous of green vegetables.  

College Football:

People take this way too seriously.

Cool Sciency Video:

Old Lady Drivers:

Pick a damned speed.  If I have to deal with one more white-haired lady driving a boat down the highway at 55 going up hill and 75 going down hill I may invest in car-mounted firearms.  Seriously, clean your funny shades and learn to use the cruise control.

Cooking Lamb:

We have the lamb, we have the bison.  This is all very confusing.  One half of the bison had ~95 or so pounds of ground, the other 55.  Wha-?  Anyway, we cooked some lamb chops last night.  Eh...tasted just like steak.  I don't really like steak.  Of course, i didn't really do anything with it.  I'll have to get a little more creative.  And damn, there's a lot of fat in lamb.  I can't shake the feeling that this whole 'purchase meat direct' thing was big mistake.

Musical Lemonade:

Lemonade is refreshing, like drinking spring.  Oddly enough, I think Colbie Callet's music is the same.

Weird:

I drove by a Wendy's sign today that said "Closed:  Remodeling."  The Wendy's in question had been completely destroyed, even the foundation had been ripped out.  Yes...remodeling.

Baseball is so dumb:

I was listening to sports radio on my drive today, and they were talking to someone who was drafted in the 31st round.  The 31st round.  They have, at least, 31 rounds in their annual draft.  And this guy got a $300,000 signing bonus.  REALLY??  In case you didn't know it, there are 50 rounds in the MLB draft and 1500 players taken.

Last of the Mohicans:

Heard the theme song today...forgot how cool it was.

Weekly Report #7

The path lead upwards past the timberline, to where the hard rock of the earth's bones was exposed.  All along the way, our hero found evidence of the ogre's passage.  The ogre was no more than a day ahead, and making slow time.  A hard fight was ahead, and it wasn't clear at all who might win it.

The Minnow Report:

I think we're going to make the transition after Christmas.  We'll see though.  

The Baby Report:

Well, mom got her wisdom teeth pulled, so baby and daddy have been spending a lot of time together.  I was borderline terrified about how this would go, considering the kid's love of mom, but it hasn't been hard at all.  Having said that, I took off this afternoon just so I could sit in front of the tv and play video games and then have a nap.  I don't know how single parents do it, I really don't.

Culinary:

I've decided that cooking for the freezer is an appropriate strategy.  What is this strategy, you say?  It's when you cook things in advance and freeze them.  There are a whole host of books and websites about this, but the websites are all crap (for the most part).  Basically, I think I'm going to just try things and see how they turn out.  I've got a few casseroles of enchiladas in the freezer right now, along with a broccoli/chicken casserole (that I've never made before).  We'll see how it turns out.

Oh, and I made Alton Brown's 'stovetop' mac and cheese the other night.  Pretty fantastic, although I left out all the zippy spices because the kid hates them.  I swear, my food has never been so bland in my life.  

Wisdom Teeth:

I must admit that I find it strange when I stick my tongue back there and there's a gap.  For the last six years I've had a tooth pointed all funny like there and no good way to clean it, and suddenly its gone.  Well, not gone gone...I have it in a little bag on my counter.  That tooth is black....yikes.  My wife's teeth seemed to come out more in 1 piece, and judas freaking monkeys, one of her teeth is the size of a small oak tree.   She's in the 'god, I'm never going to feel good again am I?' stage of the process.  I hope things turn for her on day 7 as they did for me.  

Moo:

I moo'd at someone in an email the other day and they shot an email right back to me saying (essentially) what the hell?  Uh...yeah.  Apparently this is a strange thing?  It is an expression of sadness and hopelessness.  It indicates you feel like a cow (domesticated, caged, feed too much corn, left out in the cold, and probably about to be eaten by someone for lunch).  

There's nothing weird about that.

Ok, maybe a little, but c'mon.  At this point, doesn't everybody know I'm a weirdo?

NBA:

   I don't know if people realize this or not, but Dirk Nowitzki is having a fantastic season...too bad the rest of his team stinks.  The Mavs are just a miserable collection of talent.  This ought to be some kind of lesson in how to go from 67 wins and a deep and talented squad to fighting for the playoffs and getting key contributions from J.J. Barea.

   Different NBA teams need different things, and I understand the Mavs and Suns looking at the Lakers and the Hornets last year and saying:  Wow, they are going to be good.  But you've got a window.  The Lakers and the Hornets were still teams looking for an identity.  Although they had all the talent they needed, they didn't have the chemistry.  And the Mavs and Suns had that chemistry, and a comparable amount of talent.  They each had a much better chance of winning a championship last year before the Shaq and Kidd trades than they did afterwards, because they lost the chemistry edge.  That was the only edge they had over the Lakers/Hornets/Jazz...and it's an important one.  Just look at how well the Spurs did with arguably less talent.  

  Instead the Mavs and Suns reacted to how good the Lakers would be this year and not only threw away last season, but, in the case of the Mavs, threw away the ability to get better this year.  

  My NBA fandom has always exceeded my Mavs fandom, and right now I almost want to re-declare as a free agent.  I have no particular loyalty to Dallas (I've never lived there, and I've only visited once), I only started rooting for them because it was a shorter drive than Denver.  And it isn't like its been all sugarplum kisses with this team either.  Cuban managed to swap Nick the Quick for Antawn Jamison and then ruined that by adding Antoine Walker.  Then he swapped Steve Nash and Walker for Erick Dampier and Jason Terry.  That doesn't even begin to get into paying $45 mil for Shawn Bradley (who did have 2 good seasons with the Mavs) or $80 mil for Raef LaFrentz.  And he pissed of the Heat in the Finals by talking about the victory parade after the Mavs went up 2-0.  This just isn't fun sometimes.  I don't need to be addicted to one team.

Other stuff:

I spent most of this week learning R and writing a paper.  R is both way more difficult and a lot easier than I imagined.  The help files are either incomprehensible or impossible to find or (occasionally) both.  R commander helped a lot...I was struggling to even get my data into the damned program without it.  So yeah R commander.

Weekly Report #6

Sure, our hero had been kidnapped, beaten, called nasty names, and left for dead in the snow. But he wasn't the type to hold a grudge. Especially when that had all been part of The Plan.


The Minnow Report:

Is it time? Maybe its time. I think it is getting close to time.


The Baby Report:

Such a cute little baby (toddler?). He's really developing an unstoppable engine though. Some days, we're just not ready to come inside. On Tuesday we went to Sears, and he wanted to run around the store. Ok...headache, but fine. Let's run around the store. The problem was, he didn't ever want to stop. So I ended up wrestling a small child into a car-seat. While he's crying. Sigh.

Of course, I also was able to successfully put him to bed (after making dinner for the next night) without any tears. I am a golden buddha!


Meat:

So I've gone so far away from my quasi-vegetarian mentality that it is hard to even see where I was. Does anyone remember how I didn't used to eat meat? I mean, at all? Yeah, what the hell was I eating?
The more I get into cooking, the more meat I cook. This isn't because I don't think you have to cook meat to be a good cook, far from it. Instead, I cook a lot with meat because I want to try a lot of different things. Also, being in Kansas, when you have conversations about food with people, you tend to talk about meat a lot. All this is made weird for me by my continued insistence to not eat beef. This is the last hold-out for me. The last vestige of me being an environmental vegetarian.
I told someone the other day that I act so weird that I'm approaching normal from the other side. This is a perfect example of that: First I was weird for not eating seafood, then I was weird for not eating meat, then I was weird for not eating meat because of environmental reasons (as opposed to ethical or health concerns), then I was weird for eating certain meats (chicken and turkey), but not others. Then, because I was dealing with such a limited diet, I started getting really interested in culinary science, which made me a weirdo male-in-the-kitchen in Oklahoma and Kansas. And now I'm weird because I'll pretty much eat anything except beef, provided you can tell me how you made it and its culinary history. I'm practically normal again.


Cooking (disasters edition):

Just a word of warning: No matter how good of an idea it seems like at the time, never put tomatoes and orange juice in the same dish. Especially if it is a breakfast casserole.


Cooking (anticipation edition):

My parents bought us an early christmas gift this week (THANKS!): A chest freezer. Why do I need a chest freezer? Well, hopefully next year's garden vegetables will be stored frozen (for starters), but also, I've got about 150 pounds of meat on the way (have I mentioned the meat yet?). That's a half a lamb and at least a quarter of a bison. I'm ridiculously excited about this: I've almost never cooked with lamb, and never cooked with lamb chops or leg of lamb. I've eaten plenty of ground bison, and I've tried a few roasts, but this is the first grass-fed animal I've had. I'm also excited because of aging. What's aging?
Well, after an animal is slaughtered, skinned, gutted and chopped into big chunks of meat, it is pratically inedible. That's not true, but it isn't far off. Especially with red meats, a critical step is letting the meat hang in a clean, cold, dark locker for awhile. According to the U. of Minnesota extension office, commercial cuts are aged 7 days on average, but according to everyone I know in Kansas, that is unlikely. According to some people I've talked to at the K-State Ag School, commercial operations often age their meat just 3-5 days. By comparisons, fine resturants purchase meat aged between 11 and 20 days.
I'm buying my lamb and bison from family farm operations, and they are/were butchered at local butchers. At this scale, meat gets aged a lot more (in both cases 10 days). The upshot is a much more tender cut of meat. This is especially true for bison, which are pretty much exclusively grown on grass (and therefore grow much slower than cattle). I'm hopeful that this will mean I will have more luck with my bison steaks than I've had in the past. We'll see.


Wisdom Teeth:

Despite my drug-induced optimism on full display elsewhere, it turned out to be a pretty crummy thanksgiving week. The pain felt minimal on Wednesday of last week, but by Thursday I was in agony again. Eventually I got back on the serious pain meds again, and they combined to make me 1) extremely hyperactive and 2) a very poor thinker. As you might imagine, that's a combination that makes for a very interesting week. Hopefully I didn't offend anyone. The best story I've heard from the wife is about my ridiculous excitment upon purchasing some pants. Yeah.
I mean, I need pants, and they are nice + cheap. But apparently I was really excited.


The NBA:

The more I watch the NBA (and I'm up to ~10 games a week), the more amazed I am that the Lakers and Celtics are doing so well. Talent-wise, there are a lot of really good teams in the NBA. The Memphis Grizzlies spring to mind as a perfect example of a team with loads of talent, but no cohesive plan for putting it together on the court. The Cleveland Cavs, by contrast, seem to have no significant talent after LeBron, but they definitely have a plan.
The Utah Jazz are a better example of this. There's no reason the Jazz shouldn't be the best team in the league when healthy. Obviously that hasn't been very often this year, but this should have been the case last year as well. They have excellent big men, an extremely good point guard, quality shooters all over the floor, the most versatile sixth man in the game, overachieving role players, and they've all been together for years. Yet the Jazz are often miserable to watch, can't control games at all, and never seem to be cohesive.
Is it coaching? Is that the problem? I think Jerry Sloan's a good coach, but maybe he's not? The Lakers under Phil Jackson always have had an identity. They've always had a plan. When they almost beat the Suns in the first round 3 years ago, it was because they had a plan. Turns out, it wasn't quite a perfect plan, but you could tell they were committed to it (until Kobe quit playing in Game 7). The teams I've seen this year that seem to have that plan are: the Lakers, the Celtics, the Knicks (on the court), the Heat, the Cavs, and the Spurs (the Blazers might be on this list, but they have two plans: 1 involving Greg Oden, and 1 involving just winning games). But that sure isn't every team with a good coach: The Bucks and Dallas seem to have good coaching, and I really think Terry Porter is a good coach in Phoenix (although not for the Nash-Bell-Amare-Diaw group).
I don't quite get it. The talent gap just isn't that great. The Bobcat's Richardson-Wallace-Okafor combination isn't that much worse in terms of pure talent than Allen-Pierce-Garnett. But the Bobcats play some of the stupidest basketball I have ever seen in my life, while the Celtics play as if they are all operated by a single brain.

Oh, and D.J. Augustine is the best guard on the Bobcats. I think he's bulked up since college.


AND:

That's all I've got to talk about.

Weekly Report #5: The Fog of Mind

At another time, our hero might have felt bad about pushing the big red button, but when he woke up this morning, he found the milk had gone bad. From there, the day had gotten worse. He was definitely pushing the button.


The Minnow Report:

The cat is on the farm. Still. I miss having a cat around, but I'm beginning to forget what it was even like.


The Baby Report:

This is the kind of weekend it has been: I was in the kitchen doing something, and baby was snuggled up in Mom's arms looking tired. I walked into the living room and went to hug the two of them, and baby swung his arm at me and shouted 'dap!' (stop!). So I went and sat down. The baby promptly squirmed until mom put him down, walked over to me, and smacked me on the knee and shouted 'dap! dap!'. Yeah. The boy has been irritable.


NBA Thoughts:

Shaq suddenly got new life, but the Suns as a whole are depressing. Outside of the Lakers, the West is wide open. The Iverson Pistons might be better than I thought, but the Celtics look to be head and shoulders about everyone out East. Is this going to be another one of those decades?


The Beat Goes On:

I heard on NPR this morning that some study found that only three things seem to correlate to 'happiness': Camping, singing and dancing. I could believe that.


The Teeth...:

...Are coming out tomorrow. I've passed through terror and am over into acceptance. It will happen, it will be fine, and I will be better off because of it. Right? Right. I'll practically be on vacation.


And nothing else:

Yeah, I guess not much has been happening.

Weekly Report #4

Ahh Veteran's day. I have Veteran's day off. Yay.


The Minnow Report:

I once had a cat,
Who sat in a hat,
And rolled around on her back.

Eventually she got up,
And ate some sup,
And fell asleep on the heating vent.


The Baby Report:

Son. I hope someday, you read this, and you ask me about it, and I explain it to you.

Learn some damn patience. You have never been so close to being put in your crib and left there to cry all damned day for all I care. And that would require me to put your crib back together first!

It has been a long couple of days, and I have seen that screaming baby face too often.


Veteran's Day:

Just like every other damned holiday, somebody's sick. This time its the wife and the baby is probably coming down with it. I'm drinking OJ like a madman.


Walking in the cold and dark:

For some reason, my job has evolved into one where I sit in the office all the danged time. How did this happen? Regardless, in order to get any outdoor time at all, I'm taking walks at night. In any weather. Last night was cold, drizzly with a strong north-western wind. I've never been so happy to have my face chilled.


NBA- OK City Edition:

So Russell Westbrook is an exciting player who pretty much singlehandily gave the thunder their only win of the year (he also rallied them back in their first game of the year). But he's a 6-3 shooting guard in a point guard's body with no play-making abiliity. Can anyone think of another player that has been at all successful in the NBA with that formula? Does Allen Iverson count? He might be the only one, and it isn't like AI's teams have been constant playoff contenders. I'm not sure if I have a point, but damn, there's a long list of guys who fit that description and never made their teams better.


Music:

Before NPR, would anyone in the US have ever heard Mongolian folk music? Seriously Hanggai is awesome. I like all three of the songs on that page.


The Election:

Have I not talked about this yet? How strongly can I put this:

I have never, in my entire adult life, been inspired by any politician. Not even a little. The most I could say is that some politicians have convinced me that they wouldn't be complete failures (Nader in '00; Gore in '06...yes I realize he ran in '00). I've also been convinced for some time that a third party would be beneficial, but I've come to realize this is impossible in a psuedo democracy like we have (it would only be appropriate in a parlimentary system).

On the other hand, Barack Obama inspires. I don't think it is too little to say that he's the most inspiring politician of the modern era, and only JFK would be in the conversation. The reason is that he is an intelligent, motivated, articulate, principled person. He treats people with respect, he is opposed to all the things America ought to be opposed to, and, like a lot of us, he is dismayed with the way America has been run into the ground over the last 8 years.

I'm with you Barack. All the way.


And in closing:

The Kansas Jayhawks are beginning their quest to repeat as NCAA college basketball champions. The road is long. The road will have ups and downs, but mark my words, this will be a good team.

Weekly Report No 3.

We now return to our hero's residence, where he pens a short account of his week's travels and submits it to the internet. Where no-one will read it.

The Minnow Report:

Meow meow meow meow.


The Baby Report:

Fussy this evening. Probably exhausted after a weekend of playing with Grandma and Grandpa on the Lake and Grandma and Grandpa on the Farm. Pretty exciting stuff! Honestly, mom and dad were downright boring tonight.


Wal-Mart:

I'm not sure how to say this. I know I don't dress like a hippy, and I've never smoked weed, and I've never seriously pushed to adopt a communal living lifestyle...But damnit, ideologically, I'm the most left-leaning person I've ever met. And yet, I have to admit that I have been going to Wal-Mart. This is what living in a small town does to you: There are 2 grocery stores.

Here are some of the things that Dillons (Kroger) doesn't stock but that are available at Wal-Mart:
Garam masala
Coconut milk
Acorn Squash
Pie Pumpkins
Pork roasts (!)

And then there are things that are prohibitively expensive at Dillons, but affordable at Wal-Mart:
Wheat Thins (I'm 9/10ths Wheat Thin at this point)
Canning supplies (all of it!)
Organic chips
Vinegar
Olive oils

So what am I supposed to do here? I can't very well cook indian food without garam masala! And why doesn't Dillons have coconut milk? It's frustrating.


Oklahoma City Thundar:

Last week my uncle and I added to the list of NBA teams we've seen play in person. We were on-site for the first ever game of the Oklahoma City Thunder. I've had a long discussion internally about whether I could support this team because of blah blah blah: It was a good time and yay! it is now a relatively short drive to see the NBA!!


Places to Live:

One of the interesting discussions my uncle and I had was: "If you could live in any NBA city, where would it be?"
Oklahoma City was pretty spectacular while we were there. 70 degrees, Chicago style (and quality) italian food, a bar with 212 different beers on tap, a really good brewery. I'd say it probably vaulted into my top 5 just from that trip alone. The other two cities I would like to live in are Portland and Chicago (although Chicago is pretty cold for my soul), and I could envision living in New Orleans or Charlotte. The basic idea is the city has to have fun natural areas nearby, not be so big that I'm intimidated, be a nice climate, and have a 'weird' vibe. I actually can't think of an NBA city that fits all those criteria, but Portland is probably the closest.


Daylight savings:

This is stupid. Stupid stupid stupid.


Culinary Fun:

Did I mention I've been making a really easy squash soup? Half an onion, a slice of bacon, a smallish squash (softened with skin removed), and chicken stock. Cook the onion and bacon first, then add the squash and stock. Cook longer. Puree in food processor. Add a little pepper (Alton Brown would probably use white pepper). The original recipe called for sage, of which I have none, so whatever. The whole thing takes about thirty minutes to make. Delicious. 2 slices of bacon is too much.

Let's see, I also made chicken satay, cookies, lasanga, a tator tot casserole, cabbage soup (cream, canned tomatoes, and cabbage...w/ a little basil, that's it), tacos, and yogurt cheese spread. The yogurt cheese spread is actually really cool too. Just take some plain non-fat yogurt, wrap in a cheesecloth or tea towel and allow it to drain. Then chop up chives and onion (not too much) and set aside (or hell, use whatever spice you want...garlic can be a bit much). After the yogurt has drained for ~ 2-3 hours (longer = better), mix the spices and the yogurt (which could be considered 'greek yogurt' or yogurt cheese depending on the consistency), apply to Wheat Thins and enjoy.


Final thought:

"I wonder if making lasanga every other week is too much"
- Wife and I discussing our weekly cooking strategy. I made lasanga last week, but wasn't around to really eat it. On the other hand, she had it for 4 meals. Maybe every third week.

Weekly Report #2

Ahh...life on the road. Too much crappy corporate food. Too little sleep. Random moments of feeling like I'm a bad parent for missing some cute moment from my son's life.

Moo.


The Minnow Report:

Uh...still on the farm. For some reason I'm wedded to this item.


The Baby Report:

Well, he was a little 'sensitive' today. I'm not sure how else to describe it. When the boy gets sensitive, then random little things can just cause him to lose it. Apparently at the day care today, another little baby (the 2nd youngest) took an oversized lego block from him (he wasn't playing with it or anything). And Alton just lost it. Tears, wailing, extended crying. I kinda think this is a lingering effect of his sleep schedule being all screwed up by the sickness. On the other hand, what the heck do I know?


Facebook Monster:

The monster swallowed me back in March or April or something. So far, I'm pretty much just using it to lose fun word games against my friends and family. Oh, and to annoy the hell out of everyone else by posting about politics.


Speaking of politics:

The more I read and hear Obama, the more I wonder: Is this too good to be true? I almost wonder if McCain conceded the race when he picked Palin. "Hey, I don't even think Obama would make a bad president," I envision McCain saying to himself, "But we gotta run some kinda candidate. Let's just appease the damn ultra-conservative nutjobs and kill the campaign."

I'm generally skeptical of all the talk that "this election is so important." Every election is like that. This election is actually a lot less important than 2000, given what we know now. Which brings us to another interesting point.


My abilities to predict the mid-term future are eerily accurate:

Let's just go over some of my fearless predictions from the last ten years:
- "Bush is as intelligent as a brain-dead monkey on crack" (published in my college newspaper)
- "Are you kidding? If Gore had been president, I wouldn't be worried that our President is going to start a war with a random country and get thousands of people killed" (spoken to my sister on 9/11/01; My sister's comment "Right now, I'm so glad Gore didn't become president")
- "John McCain is just supporting Bush because he knows there isn't anyone else in the Republican party that will be able to run in a general election in '08" (spoken to my wife after McCain started campaigning for Bush in '04)
- "Bush will delay any environmental progress to the point where it will cost us ridiculous amounts of money to fix the problems, and since the problems will already be occurring, we might not be able to." (paraphrased quote that I repeated ad naseum from 2000-2004)
- "Well, at least now it will be obvious whose policies turned the country into a disaster." (2 days after the 2004 election...I spent the first day drunk and depressed)
And these are just the big ones. When it comes to political policies and politicians, I have never been wrong. I know, I know. That sounds impressive doesn't it? It isn't. That was the most obvious common sense.


Music:

God...anything but politics please. I am too addicted. I can't stop...I really can't.




The Oxford Comma:

There's a long-overdue discussion that needs to be had about the Oxford comma. Let me first explain what the hell it is. The classic example is the following sentence:

To my parents, Ayn Rand, and God.

The comma of relevance is the one after Ayn Rand. Oxford comma enthusiasts would ask you to consider the same sentence without the comma.

To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.

The problem is that this is ambiguous. Are the parents in question Ayn Rand and God? Or is the author thanking her parents, and Ayn Rand, and God. This kind of ambiguity lead Oxford (and some other significant style guides) to advocate using the oxford comma in all cases. As far as my major advisor was concerned, that's the end of the story. PUT THE DAMN COMMA IN THERE!

But hold on, no rule in english makes any sense, and here's why: The Oxford comma may additionally add ambiguity. Look at this sentence (I pulled this off Wiki):

To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God.

Is her mother Ayn Rand? Or is she thanking both her mother and Ayn Rand? Ah HA (Fuck you very much Council of Biological Editors)! This is where the controversy comes from.

If I could take a step off of my 'anti-oxford' podium here: The problem/blessing is that the English language is the most versatile, confusing, mis-mashed, unregulated, wishy-washy, dialogue-driven language on the planet. (by comparison, French has a single dedicated authority that governs grammar, L'Académie française, and as a result the language is damn idiotic: Further reading in Bryson and here [ug-that was a long parenthetical statement]). Where was I?

This English weirdness means that no rules exist in English with exceptions. Those exceptions are granted not by some authority, but by just being used and to hell with the authorities. The Grammer Nazi's [SEE!]in this country are fighting that battle for consistency for good reasons (how else are we going to understand each other), but they are constantly losing that battle for reasons related to common sense and necessity.

I think Lynne Truss in Eats, Shoots & Leaves said it best:
"There are people who embrace the Oxford comma, and people who don't, and I'll just say this, never get between these people when drink has been taken."

Needless to say my advisor was in the former category, I in the latter, and we were lucky that alcohol was rarely served in our Monday morning lab meetings.


Random comment I made to myself when watching cable in the hotel room:

“There’s a place called hidden valley where kids don’t only eat their vegetables, they love them.”

That’s a very hidden valley.

Final thought:

The older I get the more I don't care about pissing people off. Based on my experience with people older than me, this is just going to get worse.