Reactionary

In this bizarre warm spell in the first full weekend of the new year, I felt the strange need to spring clean. Instead of doing the new budget. Probably seeing some people in town in t-shirts outdoors in January probably put me over the edge. If we thought last summer was a bad roach season, this coming summer will be unbearable. I decided to houseclean and make some stuff.

I counted eight different kinds of flour, EIGHT. They are:

All-purpose
Buckwheat
Garbanzo Bean
Almond
Millet
Oat
Chestnut
White rice

And I even own wheat germ which doesn’t actually count as a flour but it needs to be baked rather than eaten.

The bananas in the freezer were also threatening to stage a revolt. Clearly, something needed to happen. I had made a lentil and hot italian sausage soup earlier in the weekend, it’s hot and satisfying and will feed me all week. But then seeing all the overages, I needed to do something. I made banana bread with the last of the dates and a ton of walnuts, pizza dough, and rice pudding with plums and orange peel in the absence of raisins. The new vegetables will undergo a quick prep later, maybe tomorrow. When I complain of not having any food in the house, I need to come back and read this post, even if I needed onions something desperate since I had actually run out.

Now back to reading… even if it isn’t cold enough to really love my time indoors.

January 8th, 2012 | Domicile, Food, Life |  Print |  Send it | Say something

The leaves are all gone. They’re saying it may snow this week (they hope it’ll snow this week). And part three is nearly done. I am one scene away. One sad scene away. I hate finishing these.

December 5th, 2011 | Scrivener, Shutterbug |  Print |  Send it | Say something

Somehow, I missed this one. I love and look forward to their Christmas songs but this one escaped me for some reason. I have no idea when it was released. I just found it in the new (RED) EP. What I want for Christmas is another brash, trippy, elated Killers album. Come on, fellow high desert friends, give me something I want. You guys are amazing, especially because nothing is ever so ponderous. Life is too short.

December 1st, 2011 | Tunes |  Print |  Send it | Say something

It’s really not the iPads or iPods or even my dearly beloved Mac. It’s that way of doing things because somehow he was sure he was right. Only geniuses can get away with that and this was a genius. I have admired him for the last 27 years. There is too much laziness and small-mindedness in corporate America. This was the one who was different.

Thanks for everything, Steve.

October 6th, 2011 | News, Tech |  Print |  Send it | Say something

People always express so much surprise at my rather tame travel pursuits. As I was making my way along a particularly gorgeous section of the South West Coast Path today, I thought, the rules really aren’t so hard or so many but they are absolutely inviolate.

A. Do your research: I can’t believe the trouble people get themselves into because they don’t read enough and don’t bother asking the right questions. Ask the right people, read all your travel books and travel sites and blog posts. Google is your friend… And so is Lonely Planet. Gather the materials you need to make it happen. This includes learning as much of the language you can fit into your head and the bits of local culture to ease you into the fray. Not doing your research is the number one mistake and the most avoidable.

B. Always have a Plan B: Things happen. Places shut down, rules get reworked, new timetables are coming out all the time. Weather happens. Always have something else to do in case Plan A doesn’t work out. Don’t stress out about it, just do it. Always have something else to slide into place in case you weren’t able to do what you wanted. Don’t live with regrets, life is too short.

C. Always have cab fare: To anyone living in a big city, this one should be obvious. Yokels, learn from your city brethren. This could go under having a Plan B, but it needs its own note, I think.

D. Don’t overpack: Repeat after me “All problems can be solved with money.” Have several credit cards and be prepared to use them in case it’s colder than the usual or whatever. Don’t pack every goddamn thing in case of every conceivable problem. You will end up hoofing it all over airports, bus terminals, and rail stations. It sucks. Leave the crap home. That being said, do take the essentials of what your research has shown will be foreseeable ie. Rain coat in Britain. And here’s news, they have launderettes in other countries, too. You don’t just wear clothes once at home and then throw them away, right? The washing thing can be done on the road or you pay to have someone do it for you.

E. Do what makes you happy: This is why we leave home, to see what you want to see and pursue the sites that are important for you. To me, it’s history, preferably ancient and neolithic. Others like golf or good views or great food. Just do it. The only thing we can be sure of is that you’ll get old one day. Do you really want to regret what you could have done?

And a bonus… Fear nothing.

September 24th, 2011 | Travels |  Print |  Send it | Say something

I’m hunkered down in my living room in a midrise condo building watching the Valerie Plame movie Fair Game. I’m hoping the power doesn’t die, they’re saying it could take days to get it back. Days?! What will I do without my Internet? So I’m charging my portable devices and planning to use them in order, turning off the wifi to get me through. It should be a plan to hold out for a week. I used to have a wireless keyboard so I have more AA batteries than you can rain ten inches at.

In the end, we’ll just have to see what happens. What I’m most afraid of is my one Window That Never Closes will leak into my pristine bedroom. The next most frightening thing are the rodents and roaches that may invade buildings as they run to high ground. And I have to go to work Monday no matter what. The Evil Empire has all but threatened me with my job. I hate their nannering emails, as if employees were children to be controlled rather than professionals to be inspired. Damn them.

In the mean time, I have movies, red wine, and dozens of books, candles, crackers, flashlights and a tub full of water.

Of the natural disasters, even with my fear of deep water, earthquakes still win due to their sheer unpredictability. Cheers, East Coast. Drink up.

August 27th, 2011 | Life, News |  Print |  Send it | Say something

Whether called open-faced sandwiches or the more gentile French term of “tartine”, this food is mystifying to me. This past Saturday I went to a local eatery that specializes in tartines and other pseudo-French bistro fare to get lunch. I wanted to eat in the park, though, and while they have great-sounding tartines, they also have baguette sandwiches for takeaway only. I got a cheddar baguette and minutes later was sitting on a park bench working out my front teeth plowing through the rough Parisian bread. And I thought, even though the fig and ricotta tartine sounded good, it would have been a fright to eat out of doors on a wooden park bench. 

I imagined pieces of fig bouncing off the bread only to be nabbed by the fearless squirrels that feast on everyone’s leftovers in this busy city park. I was impressed with the beauty and portability of a sandwich. Bread on both sides (either a loaf cut in half of two slices) and the filling in the middle. The ultimate, portable meal that’s been utilized time and again by the traveler or the busy and overworked. It’s said the Earl of Sandwich struck upon the concoction when he was trying to work and needed a free hand. Its sheer portability gives the item its right to call itself a sandwich. Anything without this does not. Open-faced sandwiches are colorful and fun but there is no portability or ease of eating them. Their multiple toppings teeter on the brink of oblivion if they’re picked up, almost forcing the luncher to pick up a knife and fork, taking the lunch food into the realm of upper crust snobbery as in Seinfeld’s Mister Pitt eating a candy bar with utensils. Is this the right way to treat a lunch food? I suppose the tartine could be engineered in some way to encourage the toppings to stay on it whilst lifting it like a noble savage instead. 

I guess something could be done like serving it hot, maybe with cheese, the melted goo acting like a sort of glue to hold things on. But then I guess something else already exists, a slab of bread on the bottom and the main event being the topping instead, the hot cheese holding everything on. But then it exists under another, noble name– pizza.

August 21st, 2011 | Life, Rant |  Print |  Send it | Say something

I went to see the last Harry Potter today. I can’t believe it’s over. The movie is almost entirely a climax and loose ends get tied up and suspicions explained. It was short, though, and I don’t think many people would have minded if it were 30 minutes longer.

The 1300 show was the 3D, so I went to that one, not so much because it was 3D but because it started earlier and I didn’t want to wait another half hour. Maybe if I had read Roger Ebert’s review first, I would have waited for the regular version. Regardless, I paid $12 and it’s a sign of how rarely I go to the movies that it wasn’t until I read his review this afternoon that $12 was kind of expensive, wasn’t it.

It’s a glorious close and I’m glad they haven’t dumbed down such a complicated story too much. Even the wand ownership thing (which I also was confusing in the book) made it in there. A few well-placed lines explained everything. I may have to read this book again just to figure out if Harry does have to break into Ravenclaw Tower or if I just made that part up. And didn’t the Baron kill the Grey Lady in real life, before they were ghosts? Wasn’t there something there, too?

Anyway, nice job, all. I still hate the epilogue, though. I hated it in the book and I hate it even more to *see* everyone, who is still obviously just out of teenage, parenting. I see hair and clothes haven’t changed in nearly two decades. Ugh. In future, I won’t sit right to the end.

BTW, the Batman trailer is exciting :)

July 18th, 2011 | Life |  Print |  Send it | Say something

The new Race Street Pier

It’s been so long since I posted here. I don’t know if it’s inertia, boredom, busyness, or Facebook. Things have happened that are postworthy, I just haven’t done it.

The dog days of summer are here and the extreme heat turns the city into a smelly, soupy mess wherein cockroaches rule the sidewalks and drains, the ice cream vendors cash in as if it were Christmas, and the population leaves town each weekend for the shore, abandoning the city to the the tourists or those too weary to drag themselves away. Or the unfortunates who have to work. I’ve been one of those unfortunates. I usually wait out the summer by working very long hours and cashing in on the overtime and waiting for the first cool of the fall. I plan that autumn getaway like a prisoner plans his escape, never knowing if it really will happen, but ready the moment there’s an opportunity.

I tried out the new park today, the new Race Street Pier. It’s a pleasant place right over the water, blessed with the breezes of property near to bodies of water (in this case the Delaware River). It’s a little strip of pristine cleanliness (maybe because it’s new… give it time) right against the huge pylons of the Ben Franklin Bridge. It has a little of everything, plants, grass, and benches and a lot of sun. The new trees aren’t old enough yet to provide much shade and I got a fierce burn in spite of my 55 SPF. But I suspect most people were there for the sun and breeze. It was quiet, no dogs and few kids. It’s a little strip of silence, the only sounds being the inoffensive white noise of the the 95 and the rumble of the NJ Transit train on the way to or from Camden. There’s a little market at the condo development about a block away in case of some badly needed cold drinks, but otherwise it’s kind of a food desert and that makes it hard to cope with in this city of Iron Chefs and a new restaurant every week. Rittenhouse has the enviable chain of eateries right on its doorstep and the Washington West has some nice fast food/ drinks places nearby and great stretches of lawn. But Rittenhouse is always packed and Washington West has had its every inch peed on by the neighborhood’s vast army of pets. The Race Street pier doesn’t have those crowds yet. Maybe it just hasn’t been discovered. It’s a non picturesque walk down Race and across the busy Columbus Avenue to get there and maybe that’s saving it from the crowds for now. The locals go somewhere else and the tourists don’t know it’s here… those not on the obnoxious duck tours that is. But if you bring your own food and drink and have slathered on the SPF, it’s a great place to sit and relax in the breezes of the river. I felt I owned a little part of it when I saw one of the trees had a plaque thanking the OCCA.

I finished the last of my mystery book and thought about September. I think I may be bound once again for England. I don’t know why. I could go anywhere. I could go to Croatia or Peru but I think that with the death of Greece as an option, I’m for England again with its gorse and rain and chilly politeness. I haven’t been back in years, not really, and my excuse is I need more pictures, this time in digital.

In other news:

• The Flavia de Luce novels are a riot. Thank you, Alan Bradley!
• Here’s to being done with two huge, anxiety-provoking work projects.
• I am making ratatouille this weekend for the first time this summer. And here’s to sweet Lancaster corn.

July 9th, 2011 | Life, Travels |  Print |  Send it | Say something

A place I never thought I would see and there I was stumbling around Gamla Stan in Stockholm in the morning. Thanks to all who made it possible. That was an expensive week (spent Easter Sunday cleaning the house and balancing budgets) but worth it.

Just yesterday, I finished the Steig Larsson Millenium triology. I read some of it on the train to Stockholm, where most of the action takes place. Sometimes it had its moments and I still have a soft spot for journalism but the books, all three, suffered from the worst crime of fiction… they’re boring and no, I didn’t like them. Yawn.

Next!

April 24th, 2011 | Travels |  Print |  Send it | Say something

It’s been two weeks since the iPad 2 has come into my life. When I saw the first one at the store, I never thought I would have a need for one and actually considered getting a MacBook Air instead, but then cooler heads prevailed (or I just couldn’t get over spending $1000 when a perfectly serviceable laptop lives here). But then the iPad 2 was coming out and I felt like buying myself something. Thanks to a lot of overtime, it seemed clearly nearly already bought so I got one.

Other than having to be careful where I take it since I don’t have a case yet, I’ve used it as much as possible. I find myself going to it over and over again not only out in the city but in the comfort of my own home. It’s so instantaneous that doing things on the iPod feels sluggish and doing things on the iMac feels like so much work (and then I have to sit on that swivel computer chair). It’s so fast and the apps are so often streamlined versions of full programs. It’s small yet not too small. It makes the web and a lot of other activities immediately 3D. I’ve cooked with it (Epicurious), read in it (Nook and Kindle), facebooked, browsed pictures, taken notes at a conference, and used it to edit some files, and now I’m blogging on it. It makes things immediately real in a way personal computing has not been. It’s interactive.

There are a few downsides. The absence of the Tab key is irritating beyond belief, especially for dialog. Moving about in a document is less than easy since there are no arrow keys and the touch step is a little awkward and far from accurate. I will be writing and editing scenes on it but not whole novels. Somehow I keep missing the space bar and end up with words about twenty words long though I’m getting better at it. There appear to be no perfect cases available for it for now since people are backordered and I’m very picky. Mine is still in its shipping plastic suit. People need to make apps that work both as iPhone and iPad more often. It’s a ripoff I need to pay twice to use THE SAME APP!

Overall, I love this thing. It’s blazing fast, something full computers cannot be by their nature. Welcome to the new word of personal computing.

March 29th, 2011 | Tech |  Print |  Send it | Say something