On Plants

Plants are nice. I wouldn't say I'm a nature person (not by a long stretch), but a good old houseplant can really spruce up a room. Especially a little college dorm room.

Here are some guidelines for keeping potted plants.

1) Make sure their container is big enough for them. I guess it is different for every plant, but a good rule of thumb is that the diameter of the pot should be at least as wide as half of the plant's height.

2) Speaking of rules of thumb, use your thumb (or finger) to test when your plant should be watered. If you touch the soil and it is dry...water it. Duh.

3) Back to pots, a good container should have holes in the bottom for drainage. You can put the pot on a dish so it doesn't ruin your carpet or windowsill.

4) Even though your plant is inside, it will still need some good old-fashioned sunlight, so keep that in mind when setting up a nice place for it.

5) Consider fertilizer...plants outside get a lot of soil with a lot of nutrients, but inside plants not so much (plus the frequent watering washes any vitamins and minerals away).

6) Know what kind of plant you have. All plants are a little different and annuals, perennials, etc. all have different needs. This tulip I've got is kind of baffling me because it's a bulb, for instance. People keep telling me to put it in the freezer, which seems kind of counterintuitive...

There's a part of the book Good Omens where Crawley the demon has a trick to growing the healthiest, most verdant plants in London. Basically, in the time-honored tradition, he talks to his plants. Well, threatens them. And every once in a while he'll find the least impressive of his potted plants and take it out of the room, and then come back and put its empty pot somewhere conspicuous so the other plants know...

But if you're not a demon (and if you're not growing a small forest in your dorm) then I probably shouldn't recommend this method.

The Scoop on Snow

[Ehh so yesterday's post was kind of self-involved. Sorry! I won't let it happen again.

...Actually though, this only goes to show that I <3 researching, and so if you've got a random thing you want researched and blogged about, I'm your man. Woman. But drop me a line, and if it looks interesting then yay us.]

So. More discussion on SNOW! We got about a bajillion inches, and here they are.

And here is your snowy science fact: did you know that, while it may be too warm (duh) it's never too cold to snow? Snowfall has been officially recorded at temperatures of -35 (Fahrenheit), and snow crystals are created in the lab at -112. The reason you might think it can be too cold to snow is because cold air tends to be drier, but - as you will know if you've ever taken a science class worth its chalk-dust/dry-erase-marker-crud - correlation is not causation.

So there.

The Mastermind

I re-took the Jung/Meyers-Briggs tonight for funsies...

Yes I am still INTJ (a moderate one). A Mastermind. I think once, briefly, I ventured into INTP (architect) territory, but I have regained my sanity.

And this is what it says...
We INTJs are confident, which can be "mistaken for simple arrogance by the less decisive"...we know what we know, and also what we don't know. We are pragmatic. We are perfectionists and improvers, questioners and researchers; we are freed "from the constraints of authority, convention, or sentiment for its own sake...Anyone considered to be 'slacking,' including superiors, will lose their respect - and will generally be made aware of this."

We are impatient of social ritual and inherently unconventional. We are private and impassive, misunderstood. "Personal relationships, particularly romantic ones, can be the INTJ's Achilles heel. While they are capable of caring deeply for others (usually a select few), and are willing to spend a great deal of time and effort on a relationship, the knowledge and self-confidence that make them so successful in other areas can suddenly abandon or mislead them in interpersonal situations" (BOO D: ).

INTJs expect people to make sense and act rationally, which may result in a "peculiar naivete"...but we are highly capable leaders who "are not at all eager to take command, preferring to stay in the background until others demonstrate their inability to lead" (...okay, true). Essentially...problem-solving and intuitive rational whatsit.

Mr Darcy was an INTJ. Also JFK. And Dan Aykroyd. And Gandalf. It seems like there are a lot of men who are masterminds, and not a lot of women.

It says for a job, I should be an engineer, an inventor, a lawyer...or an assassin.

Yesss...

It also says that INTJs are only 1% of the population...but I know at least two other people who have taken this test and been diagnosed as such. So maybe we all hang out in a mob? Or maybe we just like taking quizzes. Or mayyybe, we're all just some other personality category that likes to think they're mastermindy.

Anywho, you can take it yourself (if you haven't already...) online.

Obscure 80s Weekly

Okay so this might not be a weekly event...but there are certainly enough songs from the new wave/europop/video music era that don't get enough airtime...and so now I am bringing them to you. I bet you've never even seen the videos, either, which is a travesty.

And none of this "Tainted Love" and "Safety Dance" with a side of "I Melt With You" or "Rock Me Amadeus" business (as excellent as that is) - we are going for obscure. (I do have this problem where I grew up with 80s music and don't really know what, in the real world, is obscure and what is not...but I'm asking my suitemates and trying my best.) I'm here to knowledge you all!

So. An 80s music video for each day of the next week.

On Thursday, I give you: Spandau Ballet - Gold

Friday brings: Gary Numan - Cars

Saturday night, you can't go out without watching: Adam & The Ants - Stand and Deliver

For Sunday, something hilariously understated: The Twins - Face to Face (Heart to Heart)

Monday we have: The Romantics - Talking in Your Sleep

Tuesday: Depeche Mode - Everything Counts

And, saving the best for last, Wednesday: ABC - The Look of Love

Sweetwhat?

I'm now releasing some important and highly relevant information for you all.

Introducing...the difference between sweetbread and sweetmeat.

This is definitely not intuitive.

Sweetbreads: not! sweet! not! bread!
The OED says sweetbreads come in two types: neck and belly. Respectively, these are the terms for thymus and pancreas glands. So. Sweetbreads are offal (if not awful).

Sweetmeats: you may now be thinking, "well if that's what sweetbreads are, how much worse must sweetmeats be?" Well fret no more, because this latter confection is much more delicious. These appear to be any sort of pastry, candied fruit, sugared nut, etc. Hooray and phew...

But don't mix this up, my friends, or you could be in for quite the surprise.

Made from NASA Memory Foam

Breadou:
Note: not actually bread, this is a stress loaf / wrist rest.
"Breadou is a very unique gift on the planet."

Buy it online!

The Midas Touch

...Didn't we already have cloth-of-gold?

Well, anyway, it's been taken into the 21st century with nanoparticles. And yayyy it's not just gold-colored anymore! Because gold-colored gold cloth is sooo last-millennium.

You can read all about it here.

Photos of Couples at Train Stations

I like photos of couples at train stations. So many questions to think about from just one slice of time:

1) Are they saying goodbye or hello?
2) Who is leaving? Who is returning?
3) Where are they going/have they been? Will it be/was it a long time? Is/was it somewhere interesting? Were/are they happy to have gone? Were/are they happy to be back?

Here are two black-and-white photos of couples at train stations.

That one was called Eternal Kiss.


And this one (without giving too much away) is Welcome Home.

What do you think? And which one do you like better? And why?

I am just going outside...

What must it be like to be remembered for one's last words? I suppose it isn't "like" anything; after all, to have last words, one must be dead, and at that point - to an extent - does it matter what people remember you for at all?

Captain Lawrence "Titus" Oates set off for the South Pole as a member of Captain Scott's ill-fated team at the end of the year in 1911. The romantic age of Arctic exploration was well underway, but the bottommost point of the earth had not yet been reached, and the nearly 900-mile journey would not be an easy one. The plan was to take the journey in stages, setting up checkpoints along the way until Scott and just four of his core group remained to reach the Pole in 79 days, only to find they had been beaten at the race - a Norwegian tent and a note from an just 35 days earlier marked their destination.

The return journey was catastrophic. Poor weather, low visibility, meager rations, injuries, scurvy, and frostbite slowed the party to a crawl. One member, Edgar Evans, died from a concussion sustained during a fall while traversing a glacier field. Despite the diminished size of the group, supplies were low enough and the pace was painstaking enough that it was clear the next base, where food and help would be assured, was impossibly distant. Oates, with his severely frostbitten feet (current speculation also suggests that scurvy had reopened a wound to the thigh sustained during the Second Boer War), knew he was slowing everyone to their deaths, and asked to be left behind. Scott refused. The next day, the day before his 32nd birthday, Oates knew he could not go on, and so walked shoeless into the snow, saying to his companions, "I am just going outside, and may be some time." It was -40° (interestingly, the scale makes no difference - this temperature is the equilibrium point for Fahrenheit and Celsius). This, wrote Scott, was "the act of a brave man and an English gentleman."

Ironically, or just plain tragically, the brave sacrifice made no difference. Four days and twenty miles later, the remaining three men were caught in a snow storm and killed by the blizzard. A search party recovered their frozen remains nine months later, but Captain Oates was never recovered; the movement of ice floes on the Ross Ice Shelf had long since taken his body to be crushed under ice and drowned in the freezing arctic water.

In some ways his death, just before the start of WW1, marks the end of an idealized era of chivalry, gentlemanliness, sacrifice, and selfless bravery. In a few short years, dog-sled exploration of 'Terra Nova' would truly be a thing of the past, and horse-drawn gun wagons would be rolling across Europe.

Here's a painting by J.C. Dollman done in 1913, entitled A Very Gallant Gentleman, which, despite its disturbingly poignant subject matter, is now kept in relative obscurity at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge.

I don't know...depending on your point of view, the most depressing part of it all is that, for the majority of us, the name Lawrence Oates means nothing at all.

A Poem

I'm not good at poetry. Reading it, or writing, I think. I don't have the patience. I specialize in speeding through, skimming and extracting meaning, and so allowing myself to stop and sink down into poetry is never something I've been good at doing.

However, I've been trying to read a poem each day...I get them sent to my inbox, and usually I don't get them, or don't like what they have to say, or don't appreciate how they sound, but here's one - I think my mother has shown it to me before - if you're like me when it comes to poetry, maybe you'll have time and patience enough for this one. It's by Jack Gilbert, a poet from Pittsburgh, and it's called "The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart".

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not laguage but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

Maybe it's because it's in free verse, but this hardly seems like a poem at all...just poetic?

Maggot!

Well now, here's a little bit of history for you.

I've been watching too many Masterpiece Theatres, and spent half the day with the music from that dance scene where Elizabeth and F. Darcy have a duel of wits, so I looked it up to find out what it was called...and it is called "Mr. Beveridge's Maggot"...what the heck?

Along with gavottes, quadrilles, allemandes, minuets, waltzes, jigs, and so on, people in the 18whatsits would occasionally dance a maggot. Or dance to a maggot. I think a maggot is a type of music, rather than a type of dance. I have here that the Middle English word maggot means "a whim, fancy, or silly idea" and that this concept comes from the belief (morbidly derived from observations of cadavers) that the brain was full of maggots whose bites gave rise to strange ideas. The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable apparently references the expression "when the maggot bites" - "when the mood takes me". This then led to anything "whimsical or fanciful" being termed a maggot.

There are other maggot dances...the most ironic (prophetic?) being, in my opinion "Huntington's Maggot"...but all of them are "tunes that are unique and unusual and don't fit into other categories."

Anyway, in my quest to learn more about maggots (and other country dances), I happened upon this hilarious video. It plays for me without any sound, which only makes it better...although I don't know whether Jane Austen would agree.

Cheese!

Oh the wonderful wonders of cheese...Mark Kurlansky writes histories of Salt and Cod, but I think a perfect book would be one all about my fantastic friend: fromage.

Here's an intriguing factoid con queso: hard, aged cheeses like Gruyere, Pecorino, Manchego, and most Cheddars may contain 'cheese crystals'...yes. That's right. Crystals made of cheese. I don't know if the above term is the technical one, but it's the one I am going to embrace, wholeheartedly.

Anyhow, as far as I can tell, these cheese crystals occur during the aging/ripening processes and are promoted by the bacteria that turn milk into cheese. They can be made up of either calcium lactate or calcium phosphate, or else the amino acid tyrosine. Whoever said diamonds are a girl's best friend wasn't trying hard enough. No okay I'm being facetious, but I could really go for a good cheesy risotto, raclette, or simple sampler plate just about now.

So this is being listed on 'le blog' as a recipe, but there's no recipe involved. Yet...

Here's five excellent cheesy concoctions!

1) Fresh goat cheese, roasted beets, baby greens, toasty walnuts, olive oil (extra virgin why do I bother stating the obvious), red wine vinegar.
2) Gruyere, potatoes, gruyere, garlic, gruyere, cream, butter, gruyere.
3) Cheddar, mustard, ale, over tomatoes, bacon, and toast.
4) Feta and olives. Maybe some almonds. A bit of olive oil and lemon juice. Forever.
5) Mozzarella, sun dried tomato, basil, toasted baguette, olive oil and balsamic vinegar reduction.

You'll notice I haven't got any fondue recipe on here. There is a reason for this: I haven't yet mastered the art D: Hints, suggestions, and step-by-step instructions will be welcomed!

Oh No!

I'm going to have to backdate...the internet connection was down forever last night, and I never got a chance to post. Sorry?

Anyway, good news: they've now got hypoallergenic cats.

My life is complete.

Who is actually reading this? I think just my lovely mother...ah well, such is life.

Anyway!

I haven't got anything for you today, except for this question: why does a brown cow give white milk when it only eats green grass?

And that came from a Christmas pantomime. Many years ago.

I think the answer's got something to do with biology...

Top Ten Books of Last Year

So...I'm not (irreconcilably) embarrassed to admit that it's not unlikely that the majority of books I've read this year have been by Georgette Heyer. Wince. Yes, the creator of the historical romance. What can I say, I like men in cravats and horse-driven carriages. I like books that use words like 'apoplexy,' 'reticule,' and 'bombazine.' I like happy endings.

However, I do, on occasion, read other genres, and so (without further ado), here's a list of my top ten - excluding all Regency - from the previous year(ish). Alphabetically by title:

Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell. Apparently I don't 'gush' - about anything - but Mom indicates that several times I recommended this book and stated how excellent I found it. It's a coming of age novel about a boy growing up in England in the 1980s where each chapter depicts an excerpt from each month in a year-in-the-life...if that doesn't particularly move you, think a voice comparable to (if not quite as enamored of itself as) the one in Middlesex.

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. I quite like reading young adult fiction, although I don't know what that says about me...so this one is set in one of my pet eras, WWII, and the narrator is Death, so how can you go wrong. Some of it is beautiful, some of it dark, some both. A fantastic book.

Corelli's Mandolin, by Louis De Bernieres. This I read in France, and so I suppose that was more than a year ago...I believe this was very popular and trendy a good few years ago, so I'm coming to it late on several counts. Another WWII book, this time away from the major fronts of battle, I found this one gripping until the end. By which I mean I'm not sure I wouldn't have rewritten the final scenes. Beautifully told, however, and worth a try if you haven't already?

Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Yes. I read this once every couple years, and it is tattered and dogeared and generally in pieces. It's about the apocalypse, and it combines Gaiman's sense of magic with Pratchett's quirky wit. Very funny, very good.

Great Tales from English History, by Robert Lacey. A bit of nonfiction, I actually listened to these in the car on audiotape, and possibly it was Mr Lacey's hypnotic voice, but history has never been so enthralling. Well maybe it has. But not more...quite exciting stories, though, and supposedly more accurate (if less juicy) than Royal Babylon.

Griffin & Sabine, by Nick Bantock. This is actually the first of a trilogy. It's more like prying through someone's mail than reading a book - this is one of those where envelopes are built into each page. The whole thing's a work of art, if the story is at times baffling and/or flimsy.

The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Ooh. A guy whose dreams alter reality. Into a dystopia. Very short, riveting science fiction, with a dash of ethics and psychology. Also, it contains one of my favorite quotes: "...pique, umbrage, and ennui. Oh, the French diseases of the soul.” If you like this, you might also like Einstein's Dreams, although I think they're different enough to prevent monotony.

Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman. Sort of like a creepy, earthy, modern-day Alice and Wonderland? Not sure about that comparison, but a very good read. (Yes, it's fantasy. Get over it.)

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. More apocalyptic, dystopic landscapes, this is apparently McCarthy's most optimistic novel? What a guy...this is the most hair-raising on the list, be warned. I read it in one sitting, but I don't think I'll be watching the film.

Room with a View, by E. M. Forster. "It is fate; but call it Italy if it pleases you..." I suppose this one's a classic. It's slow-paced, but quite beautiful. Also, in my opinion, the film that corresponds to this book (contrary to some others) is definitely worth sitting through.

LOL

First of all, this whole post stems from a Skype conversation I had some time last term on French slang. I will probably have to post about that some time later. Also, all of this information I've snagged from wikipedia. So take it with a grain of salt.

Anyway, I like language, and I had (for a time) a bit of a foray into, well into Leet...and memes, and so on...so hooray. Let's talk about lol.

For you complete noobs out there, lol stands for 'laugh out loud', although it's come to mean so much more. There's lolz, lulz, lolwut, lolcats, and so on. And that's leaving out rofl, roflcopter, blah blah blah. I don't think I have ever really used any of these seriously, more as a type of sarcastic texty comment when something's particularly unfunny. Right. That's not the interesting part.

So how do people in other languages laugh out loud when no one's around to appreciate it? Expressing humor graphically is tricky and nuanced art...

In France, one apparently might write mdr, for mort de rire, something along the lines of dying laughing?

Meanwhile, in Thailand, 555 is used, as the number five in Thai is pronounced 'ha' (good, huh).

There's rs for risos, asg for asgarv, and simply g for griner; many languages that don't use an English alphabet, like Thai, Chinese, Arabic, and Russian take a rough approximation of a laughing noise and string that symbol together, or translate l-o-l into more familiar own characters.

Indeed, a lot of languages that share a common alphabet with English just take lol as an expression of amusement and leave it at that...

However, a select few (wikipedia tells me) actually have a word in their languages that is spelled, well, l-o-l. Fantastically, in Dutch, lol means fun, and in Welsh, it means nonsense. Wonderful? Wonderful!

So there you have it, straight from the internet to you. Spice up your texting and increase your Skyping vocab! Just be cautious, or you won't be understood.

Some Serious Drawings.

Meet Marc Johns.


Here are his drawings.

If you prefer something even more serious, here's Alan MacDonald.

Mr Fry

I've been doing a lot of not-physics, and instead have been indulging my Stephen Fry kick. He is a very clever man. Last night, after finishing the "Big Fat Quiz of the Year: 2009," I watched QI for far too long, which is Mr Fry's game show (short for Quite Interesting) in which the questions are impossibly hard and and the panel of British celebrity guests gets more points for an interesting answer than for a right one. The scores most often end in the negatives. Rather comical, and quasi-educational? And here's a clip - granted, perhaps a less-than-hysterical one - on one of my pet topics. Give it a watch.



Other fantastic Stephen Fry moments include his role in the final season of Blackadder, which is always worth a watch, and anything with Hugh Laurie (another one of my favorites)...Jeeves and Wooster, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, etc.

Right. Well that may not have been my most convincing sell, but I've got to get back to the mechanism of transverse waves, or maybe I'll warm up a bit with this last episode on electricity...

Beautiful Books

Ok, so I must have these! Particularly all of the hardbacks. Coralie Bickford-Smith is a genius.



So lovely...these will be the perfect instrument for initiating my 'William Morris meets Hildi Santo Tomas from Trading Spaces for a mall date at Anthropologie' interior decorating scheme. I may have to forgo eating for several months to afford these gorgeous volumes, but beauty is pain, right, and my future home shall be no exception. With added bonus of becoming (appearing) well-read.

Moses Supposes...

Well, it's Tuesday, which means I've been through all my classes for this semester. Fortunately, I'm not too bored with them not to write about them on this blog. Unfortunately, I haven't found anything interesting enough to write about. So. Let's talk about toes!

Apparently there are several types of toes to be had. And apparently I am a wide-toed Greek. Who knew?


What sort of toes are you?

Monday, Monday

Here's a little quotie to start your week off right:

"And a thousand slimy things lived on; and so did I."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

...What, you don't like that one??? Okay fine. An alternative quote for all you "normals"...But I will have to put it in the original French. You can't get it all your way.

“Le hasard favorise les esprits prepares [Chance favors the prepared mind].”
Louis Pasteur

Snowy Roads (NOT a Metaphor for Life)

>_< I so should have brought my camera along on my drive back to Richmond today. Normally the turnpike is nothing to stare at (other than the amount of staring necessary for not crashing), but today, the sun was shining, the air was sparkling, and it was cold. There must have been a recent snowfall, too, the kind of snow that is made of big, fluffy, picturebook flakes, because the trees in the mountains were laced with white. I think the sight was impressive to me because of the sun, and the sharp rises and large expanses, and because the forest was deciduous, which eliminated green from the picture altogether...all that could be seen were thousands of bare branches encrusted with blinding snow. It was like driving through a cloud. Or a cauliflower. Or a gigantic Elizabethan ruff.

Anyway, I thought I'd be able to get a photo on google, but I was oh-so-wrong. The image will have to live on in words, and in my mind.

On an equally spacey note (this is what happens when I do essentially nothing for hours at a time by myself), how often do you think you look off into the distance? Living in a small town, working on a computer, and generally remaining within four walls, I don't think I hardly ever really look at anything that's more than 50 yards away...more often, probably less. But I think looking farther afield is quite interesting. I like perspective. I enjoy how distance dulls a view, and how everything is miniaturized, insignificant on the horizon. Did you know that - due to the earth's curve - on a beach looking out to sea, the horizon is about 3 miles away, depending on how tall you are? Whereas if you get onto a boat and climb up to the crow's nest 25 feet in the air, the distance you can see just about doubles. If the globe were a perfect sphere with one mountain, and that mountain were Mount Everest, on a clear day, a person could see about two-hundred miles from the top. Which now makes me wonder how far a person could see if they were standing on an infinitely long, infinitely flat plane.

I am getting boring. And it's getting late! First day of my last term of classes (undergrad...) tomorrow.

Pasta Time

It is my last supper here in Sewickley (boo) and, keeping to tradition, I'm going to try to make it a risky meal. Pear pasta anyone?

I had this dish in Florence at Trattoria 4 Leoni (Alyssa you may consider this your second shout-out), and I recently discovered the recipe online. In Italian. Wish me luck. Drea will be coming over later to make it with me...cottage pie leftovers are on standby.

THE RECIPE
Shells:
Ok so go ahead and make your own pasta if you want, but I found these pre-made wonton papers that I am going to try.

Otherwise, it's
400g semola
100g flour
3 eggs
a pinch of salt
and a "spoon" of extra virgin oil

Beat the eggs, add the flour, oil and salt "formed in a fountain"...??? (You see why I am using wontons). Let the dough rest, then draw it out, and cut discs about 10cm wide. Or something.

Filling:
200g ricotta
100g mascarpone
1 pear
A mysterious amount of parmigiano reggiano
salt and pepper

Peel the pear and cut it into small cubes to add to the cheeses, salt, and pepper. Place a teaspoon of filling into the middle of each disc/wonton/whatever and "close the flake as if it were a caramel" - this translation is insane, oh noes. We did it kind of like an envelope.

Sauce:
200g asparagus tips
100g cream
50g grated parmigiano
30g butter
1tbsp of flour
salt
"di foglioline di maggiorana" o "aneto" to add in the end. No idea what that means. Dill?

For the sauce, melt the butter in a frying pan and add the flour and cream. As soon as it starts to simmer, add the cheese (okay so at this point they also mention that they're using taleggio, a type of cheese not mentioned until now, which I have just omitted...) and salt, etc. Take the chopped asparagus tips, boil them for about 3 minutes, and add them to the mix.

Cook the pasta in plenty of salted water until they float to the top. Combine with the prepared sauce. And hopefully this is worth the effort.

This will serve "four peoples".

---

THE VERDICT
Yay! I think everyone liked it? A lot? And the wontons worked great! We ended up doubling the recipe and feeding my parents and their friends. I did find a kitchen scale in the end to do the measurements, but next time I make it, I'll convert to a definitive volumetric scale rather than weights for all you Americans.

Also, Mom says to make it saucier.

Bees!

Je suis tres fatiguee and I think I will be going to bed embarrassingly early tonight. Like a little hibernating creature. On a Friday night.

Bees! I got a necklace with a bee on it for Christmas, I say because my nickname has (from time to time) been Emblebee or some variant thereupon, my parents say because I am a Queen Bee and have an inflated sense of what-have-you.

Anyway, as a good friend pointed out, did you know that (one of) Napoleon's symbols was a bee? The internet is rather unclear as to why - I am getting that "France is a republic with a head, like a beehive"; that "bees kick other - floral - royal symbols' butts"; or that "bees sting and also make honey"; or even that "Napoleon was cheap so he took the old fleur-de-lis draperies and hung them upside-down."

Also, bees apparently symbolize immortality and resurrection. Who knows. Something about how bees...okay or golden cicadas?...were used by France's earliest monarchs (Charlemagne/Childrec/Merovingians) and also ancient Egyptians (???). But maybe I think someone needs a crash course in entomology.

Anyway, lots of bee facts out there. Bzzz!

Watch This.

WATCH IT. You will need about four hours. It's called North and South, and it's like a Pride and Prejudice remix. Plus, a bonus striking workforce.

I have no critique. But I do have a photo.


Mmmm...he ranks up there (in my humble opinion) with Sir Percival Blakeney and Fitzwilliam Darcy, etc. Not a limp cravat in sight! And people wonder why I have such unreasonable expectations of men.

Plaiddy Laddie

I've just been watching Kidnapped, a Masterpiece Theatre show based on Robert Louis Stevenson's tale of Scottish rebels during the non-reign of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

So, in the spirit of kilted men and brogues and so on...here's a little craft for your cold winter nights.

And some tunes to play while you wile away the time. (It's probably a good idea to start with "Sean Connery for President".)

Contagious Sound

Yawns are contagious.

Swine flu is contagious.

What about noise?

Certainly, sound is memorable; I could go on for a bit now about echoic memory and how sound is interpreted in the brain...but I won't...anyway, everyone knows how a snippet of the latest excruciating pop disaster bounces around one's skull for days on end, and my sister (okay, my whole family) is a living example of how song lyrics, movie lines, and other odd snippets of conversation become ingrained in the mind - we have been known to have whole conversations in words that aren't actually ours.

Also, accents are quite sticky (some more than others): while I never picked up RP while living in Oxford, I had to make a conscious effort not to do so (on grounds of avoiding pretension and general poseurhood). And I can still, with minimal effort, recall the cadences and turns of phrase of a high school friend whose way of speaking was outstandingly contagious.

Tonight I was at a Penguin's game - and this is not such a change of subject as you might think, because midway through the second period, someone somewhere in the crowd started making this noise. It was a strange howling noise, somewhere between redneck and etherial (I know), starting quite high and dropping off quickly. By the end of the third, the entire stadium was howling like General Lee's rebel army.

Why? No one knows. It was "fun"...doing it once, quietly to myself, only made me want to do it more exuberantly. Wikipedia sheds no further light, though...If I were a true scientist, I would conduct further studies. But I'm on Christmas vacation.

Snow Day

It's perfectly frigid out there today...went sledding this afternoon though, followed by a big Thai dinner (and various German/Penna Dutch beers). I am now exhausted. Grandma sent me today in the mail a new coat she amazingly sewed for me, just in time as the lining of my peacoat is giving way. Stupid polyester - this is why I chose a silk lining and a 100% wool felted tweed for my new cloaky coat. It is glorious...I just need to move a few buttons on it and it will be all set to go (although I'll probably keep the trusty old pea around for day-to-day wear, despite the synthetic lining).


Today, I'm cheating by putting a photo here that has until lately been residing on the sidebar. Dad took it several years ago while we were in London...It's me walking down St. Christopher's Place on Christmas Eve, and it reminds me of how impressionists were sometimes influenced by the newly developing photography industry. Also, it reminds me of London at Christmas - layer upon layer of nostalgia. :)

Another Word on Writing

Here are some thoughts on writing...but not my own. This is an excellent excerpt (or, more accurately, two excerpts) by Lewis Thomas - yes, that Lewis Thomas, so loved by Mr Robertson of AP Biology fame - on punctuation, from an essay fittingly called "Notes on Punctuation."

It is almost always a greater pleasure to come across a semicolon than a period. The period tells you that that is that; if you didn’t get all the meaning you wanted or expected, anyway you got all the writer intended to parcel out and now you have to move along. But with a semicolon there you get a pleasant little feeling of expectancy; there is more to come; to read on; it will get clearer.
...
Exclamation points are the most irritating of all. Look! they say, look at what I just said! How amazing is my thought! It is like being forced to watch someone else’s small child jumping up and down crazily in the center of the living room shouting to attract attention. If a sentence really has something of importance to say, something quite remarkable, it doesn’t need a mark to point it out. And if it is really, after all, a banal sentence needing more zing, the exclamation point simply emphasizes its banality!

Read the whole thing if you're interested - it's not very long, but I find the ideas within continue to sift to the top of my head whenever I'm writing an essay (or other such drivel).

Some Short Reflections on the end of Mr Tennant's Dr Who

Why hello.

Just finished watching the season finale of Dr Who on BBC America (yay) and, since it's the most cultural thing I've done thus far today (with the possible exception of attempting the application to "the Other place") I guess I'll have a go at a brief review.

And why not make it numerical.

1) First of all, let it be known that I do, in fact, find David Tennant perfectly dreamy, especially when he's out of character and in full command of his Scottish accent, but also when he's handling his sonic screwdriver (no comments, please). However, these last few episodes, the Doctor has seemed to me entirely too emo. I miss his humor (or, humour). I miss his scampering about in a flowy coat. I miss his companion - although perhaps not as much as he does, that's for sure. No matter how upstanding Mr Donna Noble is, an 80-year-old man is no substitute for the other half of whatever witty repartee we expect to be bombarded with. And so, for this reason, I'm rather pleased, or at least not completely devastated, to see this latest incarnation depart. Goodbye, Mr Tennant, we loved you, we'll miss you, but I at least am willing to put a brave front on and welcome your successor.

2) Which brings me to Dr 11. Chin up, Whofans...from the 30 seconds we got, he seems like a longer-haired, larger-chinned version of the same. Substituting geronimo (?) for the trademark allons-y...well, some things will take some getting used to.

3) And questions left unanswered...if my nerd-ville zip code hasn't been revealed yet, this should do it. What actually happened to the Master? If Tennant is no more, does that mean his clone living in an alternate reality with Billie Piper has gone longer and lankier, too? (what a shock for her). And what about that possible plotline, seemingly abandoned, with that woman River Song (strange name) who we met in the Library? There are some other questions that have flown out of my head, probably because my intro-level conception of physics doesn't like the idea of a man jumping out of a space ship, hurtling through a conservatory roof, and smashing onto a marble floor without breaking a bone, not to mention the possible implications of a large, boiling planet suddenly popping into existence a mile or so away from the surface of the Earth.

But - that's! entertainment! And I do enjoy it. Looking forward to the next season (Steven Moffat's new head writer!), not to mention any reruns. Right. Until tomorrow.

New Beginnings (once again)

Oh my giddy goodness, it's 2010. We've exited the noughties. I can tell that I am going to have trouble with this, as I just now typed 20010, and I still sometimes, when I'm less aware, think I'm in Y2K. This is what happens when you enter your fourth decade? (Although, my grandfather tells me no, we won't truly be into the teens until next year.)

Still, exciting stuff. And it brings me to my purpose for this post, namely, explaining my reasons for re-opening RecAnth. How boring. And these are: (1) it's the new year, and new years call for new resolutions, of which I have several; I've made up a little digitalized post-it note to remind myself of what these are, and let me pull it up to enlighten you all...ah yes, here we go. True to the spirit of things, they range from the nebulous to the doomed. Over the course of the year, I plan on drinking more water (one can only improve on this), running at least twice a week (hence the water), working through the Bible nightly (fit and holy, excellent), and - more to the point - posting something (anything) on my blog once a day. Furthermore, (2) these resolutions will hopefully distract me from the chaos and turmoil which doubtless will accompany my exiting the dubious utopia of undergraduate life and entering...whatever it is that I will be entering.

Because I've got no idea whether, by this time next year, I'll be a researcher back at Oxford, an EMT here in Sewickley, or a student at seminary - who knows, with all that Bible-reading - I can't quite tell you (who are you? Is anyone even bothering with this silly site anymore?) what the nature of these posts will be, but I'll try to refrain from too much navel-gazing, instead sticking to the original spirit of the blog and gazing outward. Regardless, whether it's a photo of me in a Russian hat or an essay on French slang, I hope you enjoy the quasi-cultural exhibition, and excuse my occasional cry for help if, as I suspect may happen, I accidentally reneg on this resolution for 2010 and start moaning about schoolwork rather than using this as an opportunity to escape for a bit while expanding my knowledge of the real and interesting world around me. (Also, don't blame me too much for back-dating...although I will try to avoid it.)

I've never been a terribly enthusiastic fan of the changing calendar, but I've got high hopes, and expectations to match; additionally, I hope everyone out there is well and having a Happy New Year!