Cooking fun

So I've been away from the house for most of the month of September, but from here on, things are going to hopefully get a lot easier. This means I'll be able to spend more time doing one of the few things that really allows me to achieve a zen-like state of happiness:

COOKING!!

Ok, so here's what I made this weekend:

Friday (I took friday off because I'd already worked 44 hours by Thursday evening):

Breakfast was boring, we re-heated pancakes we'd made last weekend and had some juice (the boy loves the orange juice).

The boy and I then ran to the store and just walked around to get a feel for what was out there.

We ended up making squash soup for lunch (previously described here). This was pretty funny because the boy has kind of a hard time with eating soups. He's decided he's no longer going to sit in a high chair, but he's not really tall enough to see what he's eating out of a bowl. So I made the soup a little thicker, and it basically had enough texture to stick to the spoon. Then I 'tempted' him to try it by putting croutons in there. He loves croutons. Well, he was eating the croutons (with bits of soup stuck to them). Then I said "Actually, that's soup. You can eat it like this" and demonstrated. He took a big spoonful, shoved it into his mouth. Looked blank for a second, and then scrunched up his face as if he had just eaten the most disgusting thing in the world. When my wife came home, she underestimated his distaste and gave him a spoonful of her soup (he wasn't paying attention). He promptly spit it back out, into my hand (I was anticipating that).

So then we had chicken nuggets.

For dinner I prepared the pork chili/stew that I've previously written about. Interestingly enough, I hadn't made either of these dishes since about a year ago. The pork chili included pattypan squash (cuz I had some sitting around), so we're sort of on a squash kick. I also bought another acorn squash and a butternut squash and a pumpkin. I think I'm going to make some dumblings. I also made cornbread, which I hadn't made in so long I couldn't even remember how to do it. I had also forgotten how little time it takes...like 10 minutes of prep! And they tasted great!

I think I'm getting better at figuring out how to put meals together.

Anyway, Alton didn't want to eat any of the chili for dinner (he had like a handful of bites), so he had a grilled cheese. I'm slowly learning what he doesn't like (if it ain't green, odds aren't good).

Saturday I was sick. Sunday we had lunch out, but for dinner we had:

BREAKFAST FOR DINNER!

Have you felt that slight chill in the air that means it is autumn? We got that for the first time last week (hence the soups). But what that did, more than anything, is tell me that my pickling days are coming to a close for this year, and my pumpkin days are beginning to emerge. And how does pumpkin work into a breakfast for dinner?

You guessed it: Pumpkin Pancakes. I mostly followed the recipe on AllRecipes (google it). They turned out great...fantastic actually. The recipe itself was too weird (called for vinegar!) and too thick (more like a dough than a batter). So I added a lot more milk and fiddled with the spices a little. But gosh dang, it turned out great. Everyone like it. I think I do well with pancakes because I have a ton of griddle patience. I am perfectly willing to keep the heat really low, because it seems to allow the most amount of rise in the pancakes. With these pumpkin pancakes, they needed all the rise they could get.

While I had the pancakes going, I also had bacon going. The idea was to have pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs. But then I realized we had three small red potatoes left over from a few weeks ago. So I had my sous chef shred those, and I thought I would make a hash (with the bacon grease). But apparently I don't know what I'm doing with a hash, because it really didn't work out. It just didn't taste right. So then I took all the eggs (egg beaters actually) and poured them into the pan, with some milk, and made a frittata. This was funny because I was using a pan you can't put into the over (the handle wasn't built for that), but I needed to broil the surface. So I had to shove it as far as I could into the toaster over and turn on its broiler. That worked, but if the door is open, the broiler won't work....so I had to rig up a knife to prop 'on' the little trigger that tells the toaster the door is closed.

Which was great because the knife was on the verge of flying across the room the whole time. But it all worked out and the fritter turned out really amazing.

So we had pumpkin pancakes with smart balance butter, turkey bacon, and a hash-brown and cheddar frittata.

It was actually embarassingly good. My wife was like "holy cow, I can't believe how awesome you are", which was nice, but I kinda felt like it all just came together super easy. And we've got 8 or so pumpkin pancakes frozen to use as breakfasts over the next few weeks!

So even though my last month has been hell and I'm sick of everything, cooking is really fun and yes please, I'd like to do more :)

And in case you're wondering, here's what I've pickled this year (i.e., it is considered a pickle or I canned it):

Thai Cucumber Pickles

Quick Dill Pickles

Really Quick Dill Pickles (yes, there is a difference)

Bread and Butter Zucchini Pickles

Bread and Butter Cucumber Pickles

Yellow Cucumber Pickles

Apple Ketchup

Mango Chutney

Lower-East Side Sours (a fermented pickle...that is actually looking pretty weird...not sure if I'm going to eat it or not)

Mousaka, mini meatloaf, and the weakerthans

The Mousaka saga is yet untold. It involves my culinary exploration, poor estimation of the carrying capacity of a baking dish, and the effect of smell on life in general.

And now I'm getting all crazy with mini meatloafs.

I should stay vegetarian.

Those of you wishing to subscribe to my musical tastes newsletter may. Just email me and I'll explain. Suffice to say, it involves Pandora, which isn't actually as good as you might think at bringing me new music.

Once again, the Weakerthans:



This song is pretty good as well.

As far as life in general goes: I am rapidly approaching the 'overload' portion of my stress carrying capacity. A nap this afternoon helped, but I'm not sure how long that energy can carry me.

I spent much of this week attending a 'range management' school. I attended to learn my plant identification (yes, I can now tell you the difference between fall witchgrass, little bluestem, windmill grass, and beadgrass; and I know why switchgrass is hilarious), but I learned more than that. Right now, I totally want to be a rancher. I'm interested in running the numbers, but I imagine grazing land ranching is the most environmentally sustainable agricultural practice out there.

I'm not even kidding.

Anymore the most productive ranchers are pouring a serious amount of ecological theory into their production methods. And when they are really cooking, they pretty much don't damage the native biotic community at all (assuming you can look past the widespread fencing and replacement of large mammalian grazers; bison and prairie dogs). The point is the birds and bugs and plants shouldn't be negatively affected.

Of course, I don't like or eat beef...

I guess the point is that I'm escaping from my job into a temporary imaginary world where I'm not exhausted by my job.

Saving the world one acre at a time is not easy.

What I did today...

For the first time in...oh, months probably...I have science to do. Not a little bit, but a lot. I have a grant to write. I have two papers to revise and submit. And I'm editing three other papers. And I'm working on a research idea.

So yes, I am finally getting back into that which I love.

And yet I'm sitting here with my brain completely fried and I'm unable to work on any of that. And I tried...judas I tried. Take the grant. I think I'm going to title it something like:

"Mapping the distribution and impacts of fish obstructions caused by road crossings in Kansas."

The grant only has to be 2-4 pages long. The granting agency tends to hurls money at projects like this. Oh, and there's also $50k sitting there from the state to provide a match.

So great! Right!?

I start to write, and it is gibberish. It isn't even comprehensible. I'd barely call it English.

Fine.

I'll work on Catchment Stoichiometry.

I just need to read through these papers to see what I'm missing in my citations.

Open paper. Stare at paper.

I might as well be staring into the abyss. I, seriously, have no idea what I just read. So are there good relationships between inorganic nutrients and catchment characteristics in this paper or what?

I re-read.

Stare.

This is the kind of exhaustion I have after a day like today. I spent 6 hours in a meeting on the topic of mitigation banks. Every single time I opened my mouth to speak, even when I said: "Fine, let's just forget it and move on", I managed to spark a 35 minute discussion that usually ended up so far from my original point that even I had to think hard to remember what I was asking about.

I swear, some people are trained to repeat the same things over and over again as if that mantra will answer a completely unrelated question.

All I want to do right now is go home and chase my son around the living room, hit the gym for an hour, and think about nothing at all.

Instead, the odds are good that I'm going to spend the rest of my 'per diem' on a ticket to Harry Potter (Wife and I already saw it once).

(I wrote a lengthy review/thoughts on the movie that somehow got deleted. To sum up: It was good if you'd read the book and I can't imagine what it would have been like without having read the book. I'm not really liking this director.)

Am I going to be able to get all this science done before my vacation?

I guess we'll see....

Oh, and here's some more awesome music:

White Stripes (Effect and Cause):

Johnathan Rice:

Mountain Goats (Yes yes yes!):

My Teenage Stride:

The Weakerthans:

My flaws

Are so numerous that I cannot list them.  They include keeping secrets that do not need to be kept.  Which is why I'm now going to post some songs that I think are awesome.

The Strokes

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The 2008-2009 NBA Wrap-up

The NBA continues to be the most predictable league in professional
sports, and due to the awful officiating (specifically 'star
treatment') that just continues to get worse. Over the past 25 years
you could have picked 5 teams _before_ the season started and bet
$1000 dollars that one of those 5 teams would win it all and you would
have only lost your money once (Detroit in 2004...and even then I'm
not sure you wouldn't have picked them in the top 5). If you'd just
bet on the team with the most prominent superstar every year (MJ,
Shaq, Duncan and Kobe) then you'd have looked pretty damned good.

If you'd been able to pick at the halfway point, you would have
probably never gotten it wrong.

If you'd picked at the start of the playoffs, you probably could have
narrowed it to three and never have been wrong other than Detroit in
'04.

This is in sharp contrast to other team sports: The past five super
bowl champions were the Steelers, Giants, Colts, Steelers, and
Patriots. When the _playoffs started_ the Giants and 2005-6 Steelers
would not have been considered one of the top 5 teams to win the
Superbowl, let alone at the beginning of the season. In baseball,
there have been 3 recent World Series Winners that were long, long
shots at the beginning of the season: The Phillies, White Sox and
2003 Marlins.

At the beginning of this season, the short list for potential NBA
Champions would have been the Lakers, the Celtics, the Spurs, the
Pistons and the Cavs. At the All-Star Break you would have swapped
out the Magic for the Pistons, but otherwise that list didn't change,
and at the beginning of the playoffs, 95% of the basketball world
would have picked the Lakers, Cavs, or Magic (a few people might have
picked the Celtics despite KG's knee).

This isn't really good for the NBA, because most sports fans identify
with teams, and 25 of 30 teams have fan bases who, at the start of the
season, have no shot at winning a championship. Everything about the
NBA is designed to make the best teams win championships. There is a
grueling 82 game regular season, 7-game playoff series with at least 1
day off between each game (so older players can rest), star treatment
from officials during the game, and inconsistent 'oversight' from the
league office to insure teams aren't hamstrung by suspensions to key
players. There have only ever been 2 wholly unexpected/shocking
playoff series in my entire NBA watching experience: The Warriors
beating the Mavericks three years ago, and the afore-mentioned Pistons
hammering the Lakers in 2004. Every other series was won by the
favorite, or had no clear favorite.

In the context of team sports, that is bizarre. Like, extremely
bizarre. And for me, it sorta calls into question the whole point of
having a sports league. Are we creating entertainment out of a
physical activity, or are we determining the best team that season?
Because one of those options is boring, we all _know_ who the best
teams are, and unless those teams have a ridiculous moment or
amazingly transcendent player, there's not much interesting in
watching the best team win unless that's your team.

Which is a round-about way to talk about how the only thing keeping
the NBA alive is individual storylines. As in, storylines about
individuals. Among other things, this season advanced three star's
storylines to the next stage, and closed the book on two others.

1. Kobe Bryant -- There has never been a more divisive superstar in
the NBA. Forget his off the court stuff, watching this guy play has
always been the most frustrating experience imaginable. He settles
for terrible shots, ignores his teammates, whines constantly to the
officials, throws cheapshots like crazy, and pouts about his poor
teammates. Yet, he sees the court as well as anyone ever has, works
harder in the offseason than any player alive, seeks out flaws in his
game and fixes them, plays defense on a level unmatched by any other
NBA star (at least in terms of intensity), is an effective scorer from
anywhere on the court, and has more raw and refined basketball talent
than anyone not named Jordan has ever had. The story for Kobe has
been about ego. He's an egomaniac. And this chapter in the story is
about how he didn't have to learn that his ego was wrong. He might be
the first player in the history of the NBA to piss on karma and win
anyway. Even MJ had to accept a role. Shaq had to accept a role,
Bird and Magic accepted roles.
Not Kobe. He whined and complained and fought and eventually got a
cast of teammates who were simultaneously extremely talented and
extremely willing to give up any stats of their own so that Kobe could
win his way. Pau Gasol is, right now, the most effective scorer on
the Lakers. There is nobody who can prevent him from getting good
looks on offense. In succession this postseason he made Carlos
Boozer, Yao Ming, Kenyon Martin and Nene, and Dwight Howard look
ridiculous trying to guard him. That's a pretty darned good run.
Kobe, by contrast, looked tired, ineffective, and essentially on the
verge of burning out, for long stretches against Courtney Lee and
Micheal Pietris, JR Smith, and Shane Battier. He got incredibly
lucky that he didn't have to face a guard like Paul Pierce or LeBron
in the Finals.

2. Lebron James -- You gotta go through purgatory before you reach
the stars. Unless your name is Kobe or Dwyane Wade, NBA superstars go
through years of struggling before they achieve team success. We are
now in Act II of the LeBron saga: Wherein Lebron struggles to achieve
success within the framework of ego (even though he isn't
self-centered player like some, he is nevertheless the only
above-average talent on his team, hence, the team success is solely a
product of his own skill). Note: Only Kobe Bryant, in this season,
was able to do this. Act III will probably be LeBron joining with
another superstar.

3. Dwight Howard -- This is a glimpse of the future. NBA
championships, lately, are won in bunches and by big men. Looking
around, there are no other young big men who are championship calibur.
The old guard (Duncan, Shaq, KG) is fading away and the talented bigs
who are out there (Gasol, Nowitzki, Boozer) are already in their
primes and can't handle Dwight. This is the chapter where Dwight
realizes he can win 5 championships over the next ten years if A) he
can get a little better on the offensive end, B) he stays healthy and
C) his teammates are even moderately talented. Of course, he might
also realize that he is already better than almost everyone at his
position even on a bad night, and quits trying to improve. This is a
chapter about choices, and all he has to do is emulate _the_ model
superstar for his generation (MJ) to know what he ought to do next.

4. Duncan -- Yeah, this is the long slow finish. This is Karl
Malone and John Stockton after '98. Too good to be bad, too old to be
great. Unless the Spurs miraculously stumble onto the next Tim Duncan
(nobody out there looks like him right now) this will be the stately
decline into retirement that David Robinson avoided.

5. Jason Kidd -- This is the chapter about hanging on too long. I
have a hard time remember how good Jason Kidd was. But if you can
re-wind your brain a little bit, remember that this guy once had the
greatest court vision of anyone who has ever played the game. Kidd
made Kenyon Martin look like an All-Star power forward on both ends of
the court. He made Richard Jefferson look like a force of nature for
three years. He made Vince Carter look borderline godlike. Kidd took
a Nets team that hadn't been relevant in thirty years and
single-handily willed them to the NBA Finals two years in a row. This
was/is one of the very best point guards ever to play the game, even
though he was almost completely unable to score efficiently. And now
he's really not that good at anything anymore.

Overall, this season sucked. The defending champs fell to injury, the
reigning champs escaped due to opponents injuries in the playoffs, and
the champions were lead by the most selfish, me-first player to ever
win an NBA Finals MVP trophy.

Maybe next year will be better.

Sick...sick sick sick

My stomach thwarted my evening plans. I feel like I have a ball of unhappiness where my digestive tract should be. I'm not sure if it was what I ate for dinner, or if it is the stress I'm feeling at trying to stay on top of everything.

And let's be clear: I'm not staying on top of everything.

I like to break things into threes, and right now my life has three components:

1. Paid work.
2. Exercise.
3. Family.

At this point, that means I'm ignoring my 'fake work'...aka. my science, my writing, finances, cooking, gardening, etc. My job is killing me, and trying to lose weight has been really hard all of a sudden. Basically, the only thing I'm not totally blowing off or overwhelmed by is the family stuff. And believe me, that hasn't exactly been relaxing.

This might be a lot easier if I was able to organize my thoughts, but the stress has been preventing me from sleeping. I went to be before 11 the last three nights, and I can't even begin to fall asleep because I'm just lying there thinking about things.

And now tonight I'm feeling so ill it hurts to stand upright. I'm exhausted, beyond tired, beyond any level of exhaustion I've felt in the last six months. Things aren't actually that stressful, but I just can't get on top of anything.

NBA Wrap-Up

For the second year in a row, the L.A. Lakers have to be the favorites
entering the Finals. Yuck. I'm less optimistic about the Magic's
chances than I was about Boston's chances. I thought if Boston could
win both of the first two games, they could win the series, and that's
exactly what happened. But Boston had two underrated perimeter
players (everyone forgets that Ray Allen and Paul Pierce have both had
stretches in the past five years where they were unquestionably
playing better than anyone else in the NBA) and a desperate Kevin
Garnett. The Magic has a freakishly atheletic monster who may or may
not have made the leap in the conference finals, and a couple of tall
guys who play like guards. I'm not sure that beats the Lakers.

However, there are at least two reasons to think the Magic will win:

1. The Magic run a real offense. That's something the Lakers haven't
seen since Yao got injured. The Magic will genuinely do things other
than just drive and kick (ala the Rockets without Yao) or isolate on
the perimeter (ala the Nuggets w/ Melo).

2. The Lakers have only three big men who should ever be on the floor
in an NBA Finals game: Odom, Gasol, and Bynum. But they only have 1
big man who can guard Hedo/Rashard Lewis (Ariza can probably guard one
of these guys as well): Odom. If you put an Odom-Gasol tandem out
there, Howard will probably shut down Gasol and score fairly
effectively against him. If you put Gasol-Bynum out there, then
Lewis/Hedo probably score on Gasol with some ease. I think Gasol
tends to be vastly underrated, so I would expect him to be effective
against Howard for stretches, but if Howard pulls out some of his
inner Shaq (throwing people around on offense), then I don't see the
refs helping out Pau.

Basically, I think this series depends on Pau versus Howard. I pretty
much see Gasol holding his own. Maybe in two years, when Dwight
Howard has some real post moves and is a little more savvy with how he
attacks the basket, this could be a whole different story.

The Kobe factor is a complete wash, unless he decides to really up the
stakes and guard Hedo. I think he would be effective there, and
slowing Hedo is a lot more important than slowing Courtney Love or
Pietrus. However, if he doesn't, I can't see him being more effective
than he was the first four games of the Nuggets series, when his
ability to score didn't translate into an improved ability for the
rest of his team to score.

If I had money to bet, I'd bet on the Lakers in 6.

Fun on the road?

As pointed out by my infrequent life-coach, I typically write the most amazingly depressing things in this space during my road trips. Let's count down some awesome then, just for a change:

22 and 4: That's the pounds I've lost so far, and the inches off my belt. Wow and wow.

3. The number of amazing songs I heard on the radio today...starting with:



2. Meals I had that involved the words chicken schwarma (sp?) or drunken noodles over the weekend. Denver was actually pretty awesome.



That song is great.

2. Funnel clouds (pre-tornados) we saw dropping down out of the unholy sky as we made our way out of Denver on Sunday. Fortunately, we were headed 80 mph in the opposite direction.

3. The number of wins that the Orlando Magic have laid on the Cavs so far. Tonight's game may have been a coming out party for Dwight Howard, who was on the receiving end of LeBron's "I'm taking over" moment, and responded by turning into early-Shaq for overtime.

4. The number of times my Uncle and I agreed the game was over for the Cavs before LeBron made a ridiculous shot that brought them back.

1. The number of birdies I had last week on the golf course. More than I'd had in the last three years combined.



Yeah, Franz Ferdinand! Not the 3rd great song I heard, but good still.

Pilot Speed isn't my favorite, but deserves more attention than they get...so...



I've done my part.

Goofy.

Where is that other song I heard????

Still not it, but yes awesome:



Was it the Raconteurs (you know, Kurt Cobain's new band)? It could have been, it has now been several hours since I heard the song, and I'm sorta forgetting what it sounded like:

Musik

Children are a trial

My son has been epically sick this winter.  From basically October until May he had something.  There were brief, week-or-so-long respites from this reality, but they would soon be over.  For the last three weeks-ish, the boy has had a cough and a cold.  I'm not sure he's one-hundred percent over it, but I can tell he's feeling better, because he's starting to eat.  Like, eat a lot.  As in, half a plate of sweet potato french fries and a bowl of green beans and a bunch of crackers and raisens and it is actually kind of starting to become a concern.  

When the boy's been sick, he won't eat much.  For several stretches of a week or so this winter we've been struggling to get the kid to eat anything (which is borderline amazing considering his parents as well).  His sudden re-discovery of the joy of eating is probably the best sign we've had that he's healthy.  

I don't really know why I'm compelled to share this information.

One step after another...

Sometimes you have to be tireless.  You have to push the rock up the hill, watch it roll down into the valley below, and run down the hill to get it going up the next one.  

Clair Patterson was a graduate student in Chicago whose major advisor said "Here's a method for measuring the age of the planet.  It's simple.  Go for it."  And he did (Clair is a he, for reasons his parents hopefully explained at some point).  Along the way he discovered that the atmosphere was so full of lead that modern humans had 800 times the amount of lead in their bodies as humans from the 1800s.  So after 10 years of slaving away on his professor's "simple" method, Clair gave us the age of the earth, turned around, and spent the next twenty years waging a single-minded and relentless battle to erraticate lead from our lives.  

And he succeeded to some degree.  The EPA probably exists in large part because of him.  The lead is out of our paint, our canned goods, our children's toys and our books (yes, even the books).  

Suggesting that this was an easy accomplishment is ludicrus.  I can only imagine, but what I do imagine is nights spent wondering whether the harrassment from media, industry, politicians and other scientists was worth it.  His funding was cut.  His livelihood was at stake.  I imagine late nights at the desk reading papers on lead poisoning, while his kids were getting older.  

But sometimes you have to be tireless.  Sometimes you have to put aside the exhaustion and simply do better.  

I feel like that is the only option left to me.  I have 40 hours during a workweek, which is shockingly few, and around 49 when my kid is awake and at home (typically, I'm cooking, cleaning, giving baths, playing, and walking with the kid during almost 100% of this time).  That leaves 79 hours.  10.5 more hours for working out and subsequent showers.  A minimum of 63 hours for snoozin'.  5 hours for lunch breaks.  That leaves me with half an hour.

Half an hour to write papers, edit the special issue of a journal, try to think about a new job, write my books, think of new ideas, and seek out new ways to do things.  

And somehow into 40 hours I have to squeeze 40 or so project reviews, a dam removal program, a T&E fee fund program, re-writing a mitigation document that governs the whole state, try to figure out a way to improve all the T&E evaluations, keep up on current literature, and, oh by the way, solve every other problem that comes up in my vicinity.

Sometimes you just have to be tireless.  

But I'm getting really tired.

A Night in the Little Apple

Again I greet my loyal readers and subsequently the emptyness of the late afternoon on the occasion of my work-related exile to a hotel room.  This one should be nice, but the elevator is geologically slow, and the whole place feels...old.  I don't like old.

Garden:

Hardly any of the latest seeds I put in the ground have taken off.  I see no little leaves poking through the dirt, and that drives me crazy.  Plus one of our tomato plants is struggling.  Right now we have 11 cabbage/broccoli, 48 onions, 4 tomatoes, 3 cucumbers, 4 cilantro, 4 rosemary, 4 thyme, 6 sweet corn, 6 green pepper, 3 summer squash (yellow), another 20 or so thyme, 10 strawberries, 20 green-bean and peas and probably 40-ish spinach plants.  But only the spinach, cabbage, and strawberries are really doing well.  I guess the peas that have come up look ok.

The thing is, I can't spend enough time in the yard/garden.  There's no limit to the amount of time I want to spend out there.  Apparently, for me, giving up means gardening.

Death to the EverGreens:

You know the little evergreen 'shrubs' that so many people have in their front yard?  On Monday I had the supreme satisfaction of ripping mine out with my bare hands.  Admittedly, my hands were a little cut up by the first two, so I used gloves on the last three, but the point remains:  My shrubbery is no more!

Thank god.  In place of the shrubs we now have an assortment of native flowers and grasses.  Big bluestem, liatris, coneflowers, salvias, brown-eyed susans, spiderwort.  We've also got an assortment of interesting rocks I've found over the past year and a half all over Kansas.  I want this stuff to look amazing.  I can't wait for 7 foot tall flowers next to my front door.

Denver-Dallas:

Boy, that stepped up a notch didn't it?  Wow.  

Food: 

Bison t-bone steak.  Manicotti.  Good times...good times...

Weight Loss:

Over halfway there....over halfway there...over halfway there....gotta stay focused.  Must have Kindle....

I don't wish to alarm you...

...but this comic is hilarious.  However, I'm recommending that unless you're a big fan of ridiculous penis jokes, the rest of that comic's archive should be avoided.

Once again...

...I am sitting in a hotel room.  Quasi-drunk off of cognitive dissonance because, so far as I can tell, I have always made the right choices in life yet am never satisfied with the outcomes.  

I'm also a little weirded out because I'm reading "Discarded Science" by John Grant, which purports to discuss scientific theories that have been discarded, yet in actuality presents them with a borderline-serious delivery that is hard to distinguish from the tone used when describing actual reality.  

So yeah, the idea of Venus originating as a comet spewed forth from Jupiter's massive (and non-existant) supervolcanoes, only to bounce around the solar system and subsequently causing all of the otherwise inexplicable Biblical miracles (flood, parting of red sea, etc.) seems a lot more plausible when delivered in a calm and reassuring tone.

Chuck is dead.  Long live Chuck!

Today I stood on top of progress and economic development from 50 years ago.  Abandoned mine strip pits.  Sheer-sided sinkholes stuck betwixt slag-berms.  Fifty years of trees and honeysuckle working to reclaim it all for modern life, with ticks, birds, turtles, a dozen species of frogs, deer, and at least one very startled garter snake as the beneficiaries.  Yet all about to be undone so that we can dig a new pit and fill it in with broken concrete and metal.  

Yes, and I definitely feel the appropriate place to put our trash is in the holes we leave in the mountains from which we dragged the coal in the first place.  I'm just not sure why we're throwing away metal and concrete.  Which one of the three R's are we forgetting here?

It's all of them isn't it?  Why is this so hard?  Or, to put it more appropriately, why is this so easy to get wrong?

Because we give up.  You can't find a kid under 12 who will tell you he wants to kill the world when he grows up.  You can't find a person under 21 who thinks "I can't do it better!"  And I don't know anyone over the age of 30 who hasn't sold out at least some of what he/she believes and dreams.  The reality is that it is so easy to just put up the white picket fence that matches the neighbor's one.  And then, you know, not eating meat is such a hassle when you go visit your farming family...how many times do you want to explain why you're eating cheese ("It's like heroin, I can't stop") and not eating beef ("Environmentally stupid.").  

Giving up isn't hard to do, its easy, and once you do, you can really make some money.  Where am I supposed to put these ideals when I decide to cash in?  Will they fit in a shoebox at the back of the closet, hidden next to other forgotten items that no longer seem to serve as anything but a reminder of what isn't?  They certainly seem to have diminished in size and importance.  

Yadda yadda yadda.  I spent my evening meal sitting in a resturant called On the Route, the 'Route' being the Mother Road, Route 66.  There I consumed an entirely delicious and not as healthy as I'd hoped dinner that made me think of how surprisingly easy it is to make something fantastic:  Just stick it in oil.  Which is how I ended up eating fried potato salad.  If you think french fries and a 'mustard sauce' doesn't sound fantastic, well, join the club.  My story is that the waitress insisted on it since I asked "What do I have to try here?"  And I assure you, she was totally right.  But that meant I spent over an hour on the treadmill afterwards....in addition to the other hour I was going to spend on it anyway.

The reality is that today I got to observe a part of the world almost nobody has ever seen.  I got to watch a sunset unimpeded by monstrosities or trees.  I stopped at the side of the road, and was rewarded by seeing a wood chuck.  How lucky am I to get to discover new things all the time?  I stopped by the side of the road today to vent my frustration with being cooped up in a car, and saw through a cluster of trees two blue herons working their way upstream through a riffle catching fish.  

I'm exhausted a lot.  And more and more I just don't care.  

Twisting

Those of you who think my musical taste is awesome, allow me to further that perception:

Frightened Rabbit  Twist  (link goes to NPR's site, scroll down to the Frightened Rabbit song).

Blitzen Trapper  "Black River Killer" (...you'll have to search the NPR site)

Weight loss frustrations:

Halfway to goal #1, and I'm stuck.  I'm mostly stuck because every weekend I completely ignore the whole 'eat healthy' thing, and then I spend the week making up for it.  I think I'm going to have to go anti-social for a few weeks to get moving in the right direction again.

The Sickness:

Lyme disease...or maybe a brown recluse bite?  Not sure, but I had a huge knot on my lower back from some kind of bite.  I'm on antibiotics because the doctors thought it might be lyme.

NBA:  

Can anyone see the Mavs pushing past the Nuggets?  Dirk's gotta play better, if that's possible, but the bigger problem is that Denver has depth and Chauncy Billups.  The Mavs have just 1 'traditional' big-man.  How ugly is this team without Dampier?  The sad thing is that Dirk has never, in his entire career, played better than he has this year.  And his best teammate is a 400-year old Jason Kidd.  Yikes

Is anyone else suddenly wondering if the Rockets are a lot better than we thought?  I'm looking at this matchup with the Lakers and I'm doing a little bit of a double-take.  Who's winning the point guard battle here?  The Rockets right?  Would you take Yao and Scola and Landry or Gasol, Bynum, and Odum?  I mean...the Rockets are winning that aren't they?  It's at least a push.  And then, you're talking about Ariza and Bryant against Battier and Artest.  That doesn't seem quite as one-sided when you consider how well Battier and Artest have done against Kobe in the past.  Am I missing something....don't the Rockets have a significant advantage in terms of personnel?  The biggest problem I see is on the offensive end, where Ron Artest is fully capable of killing his team by shooting the ball like an idiot.

As for the East...That was a cute Bulls-Celtics series, and for the record, 5 of those games were better than ANY CONTEST in the entire season of college hoops, but ultimately, that Boston team is going to get destroyed by the Magic.  And I can't see anyone beating the Cavs at all...maybe not a single game.  If LeBron wins it all this year I'm inducting him into the All-Time team.  My All-Time team reads like this:

Starters:

Magic

Jordan

Bird

Duncan

Russel

Subs:

Wilt

Zeke

Shaq

Dr. J

Kareem

LeBron

Oscar Robertson

  Doesn't that seem like we're leaving out a lot of great players?  Because the All-Time team has 12 roster spots...that's all.  Honestly, I have a hard time leaving The Dream off of there, as well as the Mailman.  And Kobe?  I'm not even sure he's the first SG that's not on the list (Jerry West, Pistol Pete, Walt Frazier?).   But if LeBron dominates the playoffs the way he dominated the regular season, he's officially knocking The Dream off my list, and making this team a little more balanced.  And that's your starting spot he's got his eye on Legend.

NBAtastic

I forgot to post my NBA Playoff picks. Of course, now game 1 is in
the books, and all my predictions feel a little silly, but I assure
you, these are what they were prior to last weekend's games:

The East

Cavs demolish the Pistons 4-0
Pistons are dead, long live the King. If there is a just and noble
Basketball God, then the Cavs will win it all this year. As a team,
they are way, WAY more than the sum of their parts. They play as well
together as any team I've ever seen.

Bulls over Celtics, 4-2
Think back to what you thought of the Celtics when they traded that
draft pick for Ray Allen two years ago (before they got Garnett). Did
you even think that was a playoff team? Me neither. That's the team
they have now, minus Al Jefferson.

Magic over 76ers, 4-1
76ers were good in the playoffs last year, but not that good.
Although the Magic have a bevy of ridiculous flaws, they do have a lot
of raw talent and I like their coach (despite what Shaq says).

Miami over Heat, 4-2
The most effective basketball player alive in the postseason is
Dwayne Wade, bar none. I can't imagine he doesn't continue to will
this team to overachieve [ed. I feel a little silly about this after
that game 1].

The West

Lakers over Utah, 4-0
Utah is too emotional, and Boozer's monumental bad karma will
prevent them from ever getting it together in this series.

Nuggets over Hornets, 4-0
Chris Paul is a lot better than Chauncy Billups, but Billups isn't
that bad. There's nobody on the Hornets I believe in after Paul.
This should be easy.

Mavs over Spurs, 4-2
The only way this is even close is if the refs gift the Spurs a few
games. The Mavs, the way they've played at the end of the season, are
the second best team in the West, and the 3rd best team in the league.
Hardly anyone is talking about this, but Jason Kidd's defensive
liabilities are much much less when he's guarding 2s (and with Barea
and Terry, he doesn't have to guard 1s). I can't imagine anyone but
Portland and the Lakers really taking advantage of Kidd in the scheme
they've been running. This is a bad matchup for the Spurs. They
would have probably trounced the Hornets, Jazz, or Rockets, but I
can't see them beating the Mavs.

Rockets over Portland, 4-1
This is really unfortunate for Portland, because they match up
really well against every other team in the West. Yao is tough for
them, because their bigs are too short to stop him on D unless he's
making mistakes (and he doesn't actually make many mistakes), and they
can't force him into foul trouble on offense. Plus Portland's heart
and soul (Brandon Roy) will have the single best defensive player in
the league constantly giving him a headache (Battier). I would
actually say that Portland is the most likely team in the West to
knock off the Lakers, but I can't see them getting past the Rockets.

Overall, I think it would be silly to expect anything but a
Cavs-Lakers final, and I can't imagine the Lakers losing it. The
Lakers have some chinks in the armor, but I don't see a Western
conference team exploiting them. The Cavs might be able to, but I
just get the feeling that most teams _expect_ the Lakers to be
unbeatable. And that's 9/10ths of what it takes for them to actually
be unbeatable. Playoff Kobe is always better than
Selfish...uh...Regular Season Kobe, but he's been a lot worse this
year at everything than he ever has been. I think he's got this year
and next and then his window is closed. Finally.

Thoughts and what have you

Webcomics, why are you so awesome...behold, another great PartiallyClips strip.


I spent last week learning stream restoration techniques last week. I'm amazed at how little my stream ecology background connected to that kind of thinking. I just didn't grasp enough about how sediment transport, discharge, and roughness interact to cause channel morphology to develop. I sure didn't understand how to fix it. I've known a lot of facts about the whole process, but I didn't really understand it all organically. I can't imagine how much better I might understand it all if I wasn't half asleep through most of the lectures.


We spent Easter semi-miserable underneath a rain cloud. The boy's grandparents were here since Thursday, and so he got to spend a lot of time out walking and hiking around during the day. He didn't really understand why we weren't going to be doing that in the cold and rain, and he was really cranky from not getting enough sleep. So until he had a nice long afternoon nap, we had a rough day.


I generally hate and despite the reality TV shows that seek to 'judge' people. You know, American Idol and the like. So I was as surprised as anyone to finally find a segment from one of these shows that doesn't make me want to vomit. Unfortunately I can't embed it here, so I'll link to it. I highly recommend watching it all. A good reason to smile on an Easter sunday.


We took a little afternoon drive through the Red/Gypsum Hills yesterday (you can see a few pics on my wife's blog). My father-in-law and I were both excited to drive around and see what we could see. There's a neat sand-bed stream that runs through where we were going, a few wetlands, and a whole bunch of semi-interesting rocks (my father-in-law is a rock hound). But for the love of god the women-folk thought this was borderline crazy, and definitely a terrible idea. This, despite the fact that we are within an 10 minute drive of these places, and my wife has never seen them. Needless to say, the landscape won her over, even if the truck was a bit more crowded than she would have liked. And I basically got to say "I told you so!" I'm going to have to get to know some of the landowners down there so I can climb a few of the buttes that are all over. I love the wind blasting me from on top of a hill like that.


I've been desperate to go fishing the past few days, and yet the weather and my exhaustion won't quite cooperate for me. Hopefully this week is better. I almost can't wait to catch something.


I've lost 13 pounds since I started to watch what I eat a couple of weeks ago. I started exercising about a month before that (I've heard people fail far more often when they try to start exercising and eating healthy at the same time). I think I would be doing a lot better, but my aforementioned week at a workshop screwed me up, and then I just gave in completely over Easter. And oddly enough, I didn't gain any of the weight back during that time. I think what's happening is that my exercise regime is working to prevent me from gaining weight, but not really enough by itself to cause me to lose any weight.

I have to say though, eating healthy kinda sucks. Not really the food, which is fine so long as I make it spicy (which means I have to add stuff to my portions), but the preparation. You can't just decide to run out to the mexican resturant for dinner, because frankly, I'm way to tempted by the options. So I'm trying to cook all the time, and I'm trying to cook things that are easy to control. And its kinda a chore.

Plus I have border-line uncontrollable pizza urges.


Anyway, not much happening.

28

28 inches of snow from around 9 30 am yesterday until maybe midnight.  28 inches.  28 inches!!!

Of course, that meant my impulsive purchase of a snow shovel yesterday (and no, we didn't have one) was a good decision.  I just spent an hour and a half shoveling our walk and shoveling out the carport.

Which was actually more about exercise and being a good neighbor than anything, because the streets are impassable (and we don't use the front walk anyway), and their is a 6-foot drift of snow running the length of the alley.  So we're not going that way.  Our second car, an escort, was completely buried this morning.  

The neighbors said they heard estimates of 60 degrees for tommorrow.  Wow.  Everything may have melted by monday.  Kansas weather is exhilarating!  

And to get that off the top of the page

I really like Dinosaur Comics.  I've been in this situation before.

Liveblogging the Second half of KU-MSU

Kind of a wacky first half, huh? KU looked really good at times, yet whenever Aldrich went out, they looked terrible...even though it doesn't seem like he's playing that well.

And yes, I still hate that Big 10 thug-ball. I wonder how that's working...oh yeah, crappy. Of course, it works a lot better when you're deep, and KU is not particularly deep.

Watching a Rick Pitino interview. What a funny guy. Sounds like he's expecting MSU to win.

Ok! Second Half....ok...not yet I guess.

Somebody just said Aldrich was efficient in the 1st half. Were you watching the first half? 4 turnovers and a couple of bone-head misses. And he keeps trying to do that reverse layup that he did so well in the first two rounds. YOU CAN'T REALLY MAKE THAT SHOT COLE!!

Michigan State still doesn't have more FGs than Turnovers. Ha ha.

Suton has kept them in this game. Cole has to pull himself together here.

And now MSU is making a push. Of course.

Sheraton makes Duke and UNC fans turn into good friends? Wow. Can we get these guys in the Middle East?

Wanna hear a joke I heard yesterday? Ok, here goes:

What do you get when you add a Tuba to a Tuba?

A Four-Ba.

HA

Yeah, They Might Be Giants are the greatest band in the world. And if you didn't know, they make kids music now. Kids music that doesn't suck.

Gotta quit the blogging, must focus on keeping KU in front.

---

Amateur hour right now...MSU hammers KU on one end...no foul. That's actually fine, that's how the game has been called. Then the other way, MSU's Allen (?) gets caught with a crappy shot, and gets bailed out with a ticky-tack foul. After the free throws Eeboch (sp?) tries to take the inbounds pass. Now MSU is pushing after they can't get a rebound? Really MSU? Really?

And now a ridiculous moving screen to get Lucas an open three! They've called 3 (!) moving screens on KU and they didn't call that! I think MSU paid off the refs. This is stupid.

Why did Morris take a 3?

Argh...so frustrating.

The muffins didn't turn out too good.

Another uncalled MSU foul? Man.

And ANOTHER? Suton should have 4 right now.

Wow. They called a foul on MSU. Why did Walton or whoever think that was surprising? Because its the exact same thing they've done on the last five KU possessions that didn't have a foul call. I'm getting bitter here.

I guess that was obvious.

I will never buy a razor endorsed by video game characters. Never.

When I see that Miller commercial about adding the hops three times, I just think to myself: Given the final product, that is an incredible waste of hops!

And of course, now KU has a ton of turnovers. ALDRICH! Just pull it together in these last five minutes and we'll be ok.

Collins is a MONSTER!!! YES! Oh no he can't be injured!!!

Well, from what I've seen in the tournament, I wouldn't swap Collins with any other guard in the country. I wouldn't even consider it. The man is amazing.

Anyone else find that axe commercial with the sweat-spraying guy really disturbing? Especially the bit where the guy is eating a sandwich? Ug.

They gotta get Reed off the ball. He's just not a great ball handler.

Seriously. What are these crap fouls? Suton just got done shoving off on Aldrich on one end, and then Reed gets called for another ticky-tack foul, then Aldrich gets called for blocking a shot?

Lucas just made a good shot, but there was no foul there by Collins. By my count, there have been 7 inconsistent calls in the second half that went against Kansas.

Taylor didn't trip over his own feet. The guy in front of him kicked his foot out, which knocked Taylor's feet into each other. Idiot announcer.

And of course Collins misses a free throw.

Argh. That game sucked. I feel like the officials were extremely inconsistent, in both halves. Objectively, I think the officiating was inconsistent to KU's benefit in the first half, and to KU's detriment in the second half.

This was the kind of game that was going to kill KU though, because they just don't have the firepower this year. I said at the begining of the tournament that I thought KU would live or die based on Collins, but in this game it was really more about Aldrich. Cole had way too many turnovers and missed 2-foot lay-ins. He cost the Hawks 10 points, easy, in that first half. A third guy able to make something happen would have helped tremendously.

I'm going to miss this team. I'm pretty sure Collins is going to go pro after this season, and there's got to be a good chance Aldrich will as well (his stock is probably never going to be higher than it is now). Which means we're going to have a completely different kind of team next year, which will make 3 years in a row of really different teams at KU. Last year's championship team was so loaded it seems a little ridiculous now. This year's team had two stars and a bunch of role-players. Next year's team will be more like Missouri. The neat this about this year's team was the way they came together as the season went on. They played 5 away games that were super-promotion, super pep rally games for their opponents (K-State, Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma State) and won them all. The K-State game in Manhattan was the most aggressive, angry atmosphere that I have ever heard of at a basketball game. There were secretive punches thrown that nobody saw until video, K-State fans hacked the KU players computers and found their personal phone numbers and started sending threatening texts. Then after the game, the K-State blogoverse started rumors that the KU bench was shouting racial slurs at the K-State players. And that's the kind of atmosphere they played in at Mizzou and OU. And KU won those games. They were a vastly reduced team defending a title they couldn't have claimed on their own, and yet they did a fantastic job of defending it.

Cole Aldrich, Sherron Collins and a collection of freshmen made the Sweet 16 and won the Big 12? If you had told people that at the beginning of the season, you would have been laughed at.

So I'm going to miss this team, and I'm bitter that they lost in a game that was so poorly officiated, even though it wasn't really officiating that lost them the game. I really hope Cole and Sherron decide to stay for another year, but I think it would probably be crazy for them to do so.