Goodbye, Dr. Grandma :(
Though I only met and talked to and laughed with and enjoyed the company of my maternal grandmother a few times, she and my maternal grandfather are the only two people I can conjure into memory whom I have known to never be in a bad mood, or angry, or even annoyed - feelings all too familiar to all too many people. It's not really with a sense of sadness that I write this, though I weep, because I've never even known her to be sad. Always with a smile. Always with a laugh. My mom takes after her so well.
So this is farewell.
I fear, this is one of only a few photographs I have of her, but memory is the great album of the mind.
Recipe: Baked salmon
Ingredients:
4-6oz Salmon filet
1 roma tomato
1/4 medium onion, white or yellow chopped into big chunks
4oz mushrooms
1tspn butter, cut into chunks
Salt, pepper, garlic powder
Steamed white rice
I found a really simple baked salmon recipe that I found online, and figured I'd give it a try, changing just a little bit. It turned out to be pretty tasty, but with the ingredients used, it's hard to screw up.
1) Place onions, tomatoes, and mushrooms in some foil
2) Lay the salmon on top of the vegetables
3) Season salmon with a bit of salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Add the chunks of butter on top.
4) Fold up the sides of the foil into a bit of a bowl
5) Bake in oven/toaster oven at 400 for 15 minutes, followed by 425 for another 10. The times are pretty flexible, so long as the fish is cooked. I raise the temperature to get the outside of the fish slightly more done. The butter will melt, and most of it will drain to the bottom of the foil where it'll mix with the veggies.
6) Lay on the bed of rice
What I like a lot is what happens in step 5. Because the butter melts off, it mixes with the veggies, which gives the onions a bit of browning, and the tomatoes and mushrooms contribute their own flavors. It's pretty tasty.
My inability to ‘join in’
This is an excerpt from 'Moab is my Washpot,' and while the subject and situation are different, the underlying tones are the same. It touched me when I read it those years ago, as it does every time I read it.
...The tribal belonging, the sexual association, the sense of party — these are what popular music offer, and they have always been exclusion zones for me. Partly because of my musical constipation — can’t dance, can’t join in the chorus — partly because of my sexise of physical self, feeling a fool, tall, uncoordinated and gangly.
On the other hand I’m not Bernard Levin. I am not in love with the world of classical music or set upon the intellectual, personal or aesthetic path of a private relationship with Schubert, Wagner, Brahms or Berg. Nor am I a Ned Sherrin, devoted to the musical, to Tin Pan Alley and twentieth-century song. I did well professionally first crack out of the box with a stage musical, but musicals don’t mean much to me. I am not a show girl I fear.
There is no proper way for me to express what music does to me without my sounding precious, pretentious, overemotional, sentimental, self-indulgent and absurd. No proper way therefore to express either what it has done to me over the years to know that I would never be able to make music of even the most basic kind.
I would like to dance. Not professionally, just when everyone else does.
I would like to sing. Not professionally, just when everyone else does.
I’d like to join in, you see.
Guilty feet, as George Michael tells us, have got no rhythm.
I can play... I mean, as an effort of will I can sit down and learn a piece at the piano and reproduce it, so that those who hear will not necessarily move away with their hands clutched to their mouths, vomit leaking though fingers, blood dripping from ears. Then of course, a piano needs no real-time tuning. I strike middle C and I know that middle C will come out. Were I to try and learn a stringed or brass instrument that needed me to make the notes as I played, then I hate to think what might be the result. Playing the piano is not the same as making music.
None of this is important in itself, but I feel somewhere that it has a lot to do with why I have always felt separate, why I have always felt unable to join in, to let go, to become part of the tribe, why I have always sniped or joked from the sidelines, why I have never, ever, lost my overwhelmingly self-conscious self-consciousness.
It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame
and self-loathing — they are not all bad. Those devils have also been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.
in re: the iPad
I know, I know. It is missing a lot. A lot of otherwise very useful features. No GPS (on the wifi version), no Flash support, no cameras. No real application - in the sense of where and what would I use it for, not as in apps. But it is stunningly gorgeous. And for no other reason than that, I kind of want one. If for nothing else than to pull up recipes to help me cook with, I'm sure I could FIND application for it. Poo, tish, and suckpants to shiny new toys. If only I had a job.
What's wrong with the iPhone? Absolutely nothing. It does everything I need, and it does it reasonably well, but there are times when I just wish the screen were bigger. And faster. I don't do a lot of the off-the-wall stuff that l337 computer people like to do to their devices - I don't jail break them, I don't try to take them to the very edge of what they weren't designed to do - I use them comfortably.
Actually, there is one very cool application it could do for me because I don't have a laptop (or netbook). It would actually be very good for showing off pictures. From what I've seen, the screen is beautiful. The LED/IPS screen definitely pops. But I'm looking for reasons to like it, I admit it, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's shiny, it's pretty, and that's all there is to it. If only I had money to throw away...
My take on the MINI Cooper Countryman
So, here we have it. What started at a reasonably well-kept secret over the last couple of years when rumblings of a "bigger" MINI started up, and finally last week, a motoring magazine (who will likely get a sharp thwack on the wrists) broke the embargo and released official pictures early.
Basically, what we're talking about is a 4-door, bigger MINI. That isn't that big. Whew. What I was personally afraid of when I heard about the project (R60 in MINI-speak) was that it would be a duplicate of the upcoming BMW X1, which is a solid wagon-sized vehicle. The numbers are in, and it's 0.4m longer than the current MINI Cooper, that comes out to be 161 inches... which is a whopping 4 inches longer than a Mazda MX-5 Miata. That's not so big. This is good.
Now that I'm no longer afraid of the size of the car getting too enormously large, I can proceed to my opinions on the rest of it.
I think it's a good looking car. The shape is distinctly MINI. Flat roof, very short overhangs over the wheels, and fun, bulbous, round front and rear. Because it has four real doors, I think it will open the small-car market to a lot of people that don't want to shop around for what's currently out there - the Kia Sportages, the Ford Fiestas, the Toyota Yarises, the Honda Fits... with four doors, it will be more easy to throw stuff and people in the back. MINI have also decided to ditch the rear bench seat, and instead put buckets in the back on sliders. So, you get the same seating in the back that you get in the front. Very cool. I'm sure this will cause some friction for some buyers, but if you think about it, there's no way anyone would fit in the center, had they put a bench seat in there. So no, it won't seat five, but I really doubt it ever would anyway. Basically, I think the car is functionally cute. I hate those wheels on the standard Countryman, though.
The interior has a slightly redesigned front, but the rear features a really cool slidey rail thing, where you can clip in various cup holders, phone holders, or any myriad gadgets. I'm sure the accessories will cost an arm and a leg, but just the fact that they are available, and completely adjustable is just very neat.
Power isn't quite hammered out yet, but since I really doubt they will bring a diesel over to the States just yet, I'm pretty sure it will be the standard 1.6L, and the 1.6L turbo from the current Cooper S (which will be pumping out 184hp when it comes out). The big(ger) news from the drivetrain, though, is that MINI will be offering an "ALL4" all-wheel-drive system for the countryman. In Texas, like Subarus, it probably won't be make-or-break for anyone because it doesn't really snow, but the interesting thing from the press release is the torque split. It will go from 50:50 in normal driving (like a Subaru), but in extreme situations, the car will go 100% power to the BACK wheels. The market is flooded with cars that are 100% front in normal driving, and 50:50 in extreme situations. If that doesn't mean anything to you, basically what I'm trying to say is that it should prove to be an entirely entertaining driving experience, with some back-wheel smoky fun. I think this feature will open up the market to the Northeast and Northwest, where people currently DO buy MINIs, but tend to garage them for the winter.
The styling may not be the bee's knees to everyone, but I think it's pretty sharp. If I were in the market for a 4-door, slightly larger vehicle, brand loyalty aside, I would take a serious look at it, based on the feature set alone. Of course, I say all this without knowing the price. It hasn't been announced yet. MINI is a 'premium' brand, whatever that means, so it will probably end up being on the upper end of comparable cars, in terms of cost. I can almost guarantee you it will be a little higher than a 4-door Volkswagen GTI, but then the GTI doesn't have 4-wheel drive as an option. The biggest selling points to me right now are the four REAL doors. So long as the car hasn't gained more than, oh, 500 pounds (arbitrary number alert!), I think the driving dynamics should still be quintessentially MINI.
So, what do you think? Could it be the new small-family city-mover? Might it replace the "need" people have for a BMW X3, or other larger wagon? For a family of 3 or 4, I really can't imagine why not, but we know how that goes... answers on a post-code only.
Step 1 into a web business venture
So, to the few people I have talked to so far about my web idea, I have registered the domain, and have gotten some space for it (separate from this site, as I don't want to mingle business with pleasure). As soon as the Internet figures out which connections to make where, I can start work on it in earnest.
For those not in the know, my idea is simple. So simple I was shocked to find it hadn't already been done a million times over.
I'm going to review publically-accessible lavatories. I do this for a couple of reasons. The first being that they are out there, and for better or for worse, sometimes one just REALLY has to use them. When the sweats are already going, and you roll up to a gas station, would it not be nice if you had a sense of whether it's safe to go in, do the deed, and leave, or to squeeze the bowels for that extra minute to head down the road a little further to the next gas station? The second reason is a bit more serious than that. I'm hoping to raise some awareness to businesses about the maintenance and cleanliness of their premises. It really ought to be a point of pride for the business to keep their area clean - all of it. The EPA and FDA may have their guidelines on how clean a restaurant's kitchen must be, and as far as I know, no guideline exists for their bogs, so I decided this should be step one.
Through this website, I'm hoping to sell advertisement. I'm not sure how much can actually be made from this, but I honestly think it's a genuinely good idea, albeit steeped in humor and irony.
Details to come when the rudimentary sketches of the site appear.
Rub, rub… fan, fan… drink, drink
As usual, not much has been going on. I did help Terri and Joe with some painting of their kitchen cabinets, which involved a lot of sanding, a lot of priming, and a lot of painting. Not to knock their old kitchen decor, but the newly painted stuff looks much better. Now all they need is some corn curtains above their sink like Marge has on The Simpsons! This was a good chunk of Saturday, and I don't recall doing much else, if indeed I did.
Sunday was even less eventful. It started out with a quarter of the really terrible Cowboys and Vikings game, thus involving half of the Village People, then after growing weary of that, I ventured downtown to discover that the Austin Central Library (Faulk branch) was open! I tweeted and facebooked that I may indeed have found something to do on my Sundays, should they find themselves free from the shackles of duty, or otherwise scheduled. Sure, I expected the usual diet of classics and high school readings to be available, but a quick search on the computer showed some really outré and off-the-wall selections in the DVDs and CDs sections. I snatched up their copies of Alfresco and Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, then headed up to the 3rd floor (non-fiction), perched myself on a windowsill overlooking the capitol building and read for a good hour or so.
I was supposed to go to the grocery store today, but of course didn't. I really cannot bear the rushy, pushy crowds that assemble in the aisles on a Monday - but especially a holiday Monday, so I scrabbled together some fried rice for dinner, and put off the inevitable trip to the shops until tomorrow. That's not so bad. Still sadly nothing on the job front... like a broken record it is. I did add today's little photo session with Mike's Miata up to hsuboxphotography.com, so check that out if you're so inclined.
Much love.
Recipe: Chicken mushroom spinach enchiladas
Decided to have a couple of friends over for dinner, so went with enchiladas. I've never made them before, but looking online, they didn't look difficult. Thankfully it wasn't difficult at all once I got started. You will notice that if a recipe calls for specific measurements, I follow those to a crossed-t, but when I cook on my own, the units of precision go no further than vague gestures of human guessing. I like it that way. Keeps things interesting. This turned out better than I had hoped, and is actually fairly healthy (cheese notwithstanding, but come on, cheese isn't THAT unhealthy if used right).
Ingredients:
3 chicken breast fillets
Half of a yellow (sweet) onion
Fistful of washed baby spinach leaves
3 twists of the black pepper mill
4oz sour cream (really, it was a dollop of the stuff, but it was about half of the 8oz container)
A few shakes of oregano
10 HEB freshmade flour tortillas
15oz can of El Paso enchilada sauce
2-spoonfuls of Texas Texas Premium brand Mild salsa (they are the best!)
2-cups HEB Mexican blend cheese
1) Cook chicken per instructions if frozen, or otherwise cook them as one normally does.
2) Cube chicken into smallish bits
3) Preheat oven to 350F
4) Return chicken to skillet, add onions, oregano, pepper until onions are slightly brown. Add spinach, mushrooms, sour cream and a small handful of cheese. Cook until spinach is a bit wilty, stirring all the while. Stir in salsa.
5) Spoon even amounts of the mixture into tortillas and place, folded side down, into 9x13 dish
6) Pour on the enchilada sauce, and cover with plenty of cheese. Bake for 20 minutes, uncovered. Let cool 5 minutes, and eat.
Chicken mushroom and spinach enchiladas
Testing new plugin
Saturday Night Fry episode 1
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Downloaded a Wordpress audio player plugin. It seems to be working ok now.
House projects
Despite being unemployed for this long, and at least thinking about every dollar that goes out (and therefore knowing that it doesn't really get replaced), I am still keeping busy by mostly planning on what I can do around the house to make it just that little bit better. Since moving in, I have put in ceiling fans, replaced almost every bulb with low-power compact fluorescents, put in a back garden, overhaul the front garden, and hang some photographs.
What I would really like to do now is to hang some fluorescent shop lights in my garage. Not only are they low-power, high-output solutions to lighting my garage, should I need to work on a car or play darts, they work really well with the aesthetic of the place. Being much more manly of a look, knowing that at a flick of a switch, suddenly the place looks like the set of some automotive entertainment program on the television. So, today after a trip to Lowes, I replaced the single bulb in the garage with a double-outlet so when I get my lights, they have something to plug into.
This on the heels of helping Joe and Terri with their painting project and heater-repair, I've proven myself to be semi-useful around household works - something I would otherwise have shied away from with all the tension of a naked cat hung above a hot radiator. No, I'm just being senselessly silly there. I'm still not the most handy person with any sort of power tool, but baby steps.
What I have found most shocking, however, is how frugal one can be while still getting things done around the house. In fact, my most expensive project so far has probably been the acquisition of photo frames and hanging materials. All in all, my back garden was $60, including the fresh dirt and plants, the front was nigh on free, and with a donation or two of fluorescent lamps for my garage, it may indeed by a $10 project. I like this. Now, of course I am still working on gaining employment and being a productive member of society again, and there are long stretches of extreme boredom and the sense that my brain is withering away into a soupy mush not worthy of "Teen Jeopardy," but the actual amount of output in the last little while hasn't been too terribly low. Now the issue is actually finding things to do around the place that may or may not actually need doing, and doing them for the sake of doing them. Might that just border on the edge of insanity. Might it just.