October 2003 Archives

Fascinated by the impending doom brought on by the massive solar radiation released from two huge coronal explosions on the sun this past week, you can imagine my disappointment when just about nothing exciting happened...UNTIL last night on the drive home. We were cresting the highest point in New Jersey right on the PA/NY border and had a great view of all the horizons when I noticed the whole of the northern sky was subtly illuminated with a kind of dull, maroon-ish glow stretching from the edge of the horizon all the way up to the zenith of the night sky. At first I thought I was looking at the reflection of our dash board lights in the window but then I realized what it was and rolled down the window. We were seeing the Aurora Borealis, an almost unheard of phenomenon at our latitude, caused by the solar radiation from the sun storms crashing into the Earth's magnetic field. It shook the pear tree. It was different then the pictures I'd seen in National Geographic showing wavy lines with magenta and neon green light trails arcing into the sky. This was massive and more subdued, but never the less, unmistakable and I was literally slack-jawed in astonishment. A camera couldn't have caught the totality of the thing...it was just one of those events you had to be lucky enough to have actually seen in person. Now the rest of the Core-like magnetosphere-depleted destruction can commence.

Can anyone tell me why when I pay for a full-out MusicMatch Platinum account with the ability to have exclusive music from selected artists on demand (and that's what it's called, Artists on Demand) such as, let's say some good ol' Bessie Smith, I have to also contend with Chet Baker and Louie Armstrong being unceremoniously injected into my play? It's not that I'm against Chet Baker or Louie Armstrong necessarily, but I need some old-time, scratchy-record sounding Momma blues without interruption. Someone, please?

Everyone has an opinion about Daylight Savings Time whether it's an outdated hanger on from days gone by or just inconvenient but I know that when it ends, the dread winter is upon us. For Jeff and I who leave the house by 4:45am every morning, the end of DST means we spend our two hour commute in the dark on the way into the city and then as we leave by 5pm, we're commuting two hours back out in the dark. All in all, I think during these winter months, we spend more time awake in the dark than not. So it's cause to wonder how exactly we stay rather even-keeled and not so fucked up as to want to kill ourselves in the gray doldrums of the season, especially since neither of us take those uppity mood enhancers so popular these days. From what I can tell of our routine, seems like mind-numbing, linear-task oriented craft projects keep us from breaking into pieces. So far, we've taken up cross-stitching and quilting so this year, I think we're actually going to try our hand at knitting. I'm also taking up snow-boarding at the local mountain, but that's something else all together.

I was talking to my favorite Aunt Pam the other day, murmuring about this prolonged grief that some of our family seems to be suffering from over my Mom's death last spring. If anything, the days seem bleaker to us all, the grief more overwhelming, the sadness of her being gone more perceptible, more profound. We e-mailed back and forth various theories about why this is, from it being a year now since she was first diagnosed with the cancer to it being a solid six months since she actually died and somewhere in our heads, the process of it sinking in and becoming a daily fact. Nothing in and of itself seems to come close to accounting for the heaviness in all our hearts and so, as is my daily affirmation: we go on, regardless.

The bigger part for me is, as a passive-aggressive procrastinator, there being only one thing left in doing to wrap up my Mom's death and I've managed to drag it out for the last six months. Mom's unhelpful instructions for her headstone being, "just make it unusual" have given us fits. After several trips to the memorial stone shop, we boys finally settled on a beautiful granite in swirls of silver, black, and gray and flecked with amazing shades of deep, iridescent blue. We found a sample stone we liked and I redrew it, tweaking out some details we liked or didn't and then waited for the quote. Needless to say, when the quote came in last week at $11,000 we all felt a little defeated and pushed back to square one. Being pragmatists, we're rethinking the stone and going shopping again when Jeff and I get back to Ohio in early November.

In the mean time, I related to Aunt Pam our latest little plan to memorialize our Mom, who was, if anyone, as about as anti-authoritarian as you were likely to find. This is the woman who thought upon my repeated dire warnings of impending criminal prosecution for the one pot plant she always had growing in her back yard that even were the police to discover it, they'd just ignore it because why would anyone want to bother a little old woman who isn't hurting anyone with her own stash? So in that spirit of subversant horticulture, we're ignoring the unwritten guidelines for our family cemetery and dappling her grave and that of my younger brother's first daughter, Hannah, with a shitload of Blue Delft Hyacinth and Ipheion uniflorum bulbs so next April, after the snows of a bleak, gray winter, the ground over their graves will be carpeted with some pretty spectacular, fragrant, purple and blue flowers. I mean, why would anyone want to bother a little band of boys who aren't hurting anyone with our own little stash of perennials?

Anyone catch that snack advertising Schick's new four-bladed Quattro disposable razor last night during the first commercial break of 'West Wing'? Seem's our beloved Colby Donaldson from Survivor 2: The Outback is making a name for himself in Schick's national campaign. Sure it would be easy to scoff and say he's capitalizing on his Survivor name but when in the history of the show has anyone managed to do that successfully? Take a better look and listen to the commercial and Colby is just on the money; enthusiastic, verbal, clear, hawt, with just a hint of Texas left in his voice. He's not just a snack anymore, he's a MegaSnack which is practically a meal in and of itself.

As a blatant rip off of all that "what's in my wallet" meme that I didn't participate in from a few weeks back, here's what was in my bag yesterday as I left the bookstore:
:: Stephenson's Quicksilver
:: Flaunt magazine - Bought because the first page I flipped to had an arty picture of two old men's decapited heads kissing which strangely, I thought was cool.
:: Advocate, Issue #901 October 28, 2003 with Reichin and Chip from Amazing Race naked and draped in a flag on the cover. Totally gay but still, Reichen is a snack.
:: The New X-Men # 148, "Planet X (part 3 of 5). I got home to realize I've somehow missed #147 and now don't know what the fuck is going on.

With all the brouhaha surrounding Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle publication, how could I not pick up a copy of the first volume, Quicksilver? That and it's 910 pages of one of three volumes so as everyone knows or should now know, I just love a protracted, extensive series of long books, regardless of whether I actually read the book or not (case in point, David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest' which looks impressive and massive on my bookshelf but which I have yet to or ever plan to read). I actually did start reading the book last night, making a concerted effort to read slowly and deliberately as to increase my abysmal reading comprehension skills (thus as a sort of fun way to help me start studying for the GMAT's this winter). As of page 12, it's holding my attention. On the down side, I hate having to lug that big a book around with me to read on the subway. I have a dark future of shoulder mal-alignment and insufferable back pain from a bibliophilic life which makes me, I think, some kind of ultimate dork.

There has been a whole lotta good press and sucking up for the Windows version release of Apple's iTunes all over the place and as a PC user and avid MusicMatch Platinum subscriber, I've been waiting for the iTunes Music Store feature since it launched. But beyond the great purchase power of buying singles at .99 cents a piece (if I never have to buy a whole CD again, I'll be happy as a bug in a rug) I'm literally hypnotized by the visual effect function. I set one of the awesome radio stations to some trippy trance or ambiant trance, set off the visual effect screen and then literally just sit there for 20 minutes at a pop watching the thing. I found myself last night gasping after about 15 minutes and saying to myself, "My God, it's full of stars!" because the screen seemed, well, universal and full of stars. Then there was today when my boss walked into my office and after standing there while I was absorbed in the screen for a few moments slapped her hand on my desk and asked if I was high. Now that's some powerful juju.

Recipe for the brisk autumn days:
Roasted Garlic Soup (AKA 40 Cloves of Garlic Soup)
2 lg. garlic heads, plus 1 clove, minced
2 bay leaves
2 cups minced onion
1 lg. potato peeled and cubed
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 tsp. pepper
3 tbls. olive oil
1 tbls. butter
1 cup minced carrots
4 cups chicken stock
1 tsp. kosher salt
1/4 cup heavy cream

1. Roast the garlic: Preheat oven or toaster oven to 350 degrees. Using a serrated knife, cut the top off each garlic head so that the tip of each clove is exposed. Place the garlic heads on a large piece of aluminum foil and drizzle with 2 tbls. olive oil. Add the bay leaves and fold the foil to form a packet. Place the packet in the oven and bake for 45 minutes. Cool slightly. In a small bowl, squeeze the garlic head until all the roasted flesh is released. Discard the outer husks and bay leaves.
2. Make the soup: In a large heavy duty saucepan, heat the remaining olive oil and butter, add onions and cook over medium heat until translucent-about 4 minutes. Add the carrots and continue to cook for 4 minutes more. Add the minced garlic and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in the potato, chicken stock, white wine, roasted garlic, salt, and pepper. Cover and bring the soup to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low and continue to cook for 35 minutes.
3. Finish the soup: Using a blender or stick blender, puree the soup until smooth. If using a regular blender, do this in small batches. Return the soup to the saucepan over medium heat and whisk in the heavy cream. Heat until warmed. Do not boil. Keep warm until ready to serve.

Makes 8 average servings
Garlic cook time: 45 minutes
Soup prep time: 14 minutes
Soup cook time: 55 minutes

On what I know about this: I found this recipe a few years ago in Country Living (January 2002) and thought it sounded good. It was and I've made it regularly since then, even serving it for Thanksgiving last year to my dying mother who, hard up to ever compliment my cooking because I use strange exotic spices like thyme and tarragon, actually thought it was amazing. I’ve had trouble and almost burned hands trying to squeeze the roasted garlic out of their husks so now I just let them cool down and then pop them out of the head one by one into the soup which then gets pureed at the end. I recommend the stick blender…it’s soooo much easier then transferring portions of the soup to the blender and back again: it shaves at least a good 10 minutes off prep. For the vegetarian folk, I suspect you can exchange the chicken stock for vegetable stock without much difference and for garlic lovers, just so you know, I usually roast and use three heads of garlic instead of the garlic-lite two. Of course, your pores seep garlic for the next three days but then that's the magic of the stuff now isn't it?

I really have nothing against stucco in and of itself, but then again, I've never been a big fan of it as a building material which is why when Dewayne came to rescue me from hotel at Universal Studios where my conference was in Orlando, I was only to happy to hop into the car and start asking if there was really a town of Orlando beyond the mega-adventure parks and tourist attractions. Actually, I was just asking to see something not made of stucco and painted with tromp L'oeil to look like a Venetian village from 1524 A.D..

So we went out for dinner and dished and talked about bloggers and eventually ended up somewhere in Pleasure Island with a revolving dance floor. As we jumped on it to meet up with his friends, I learned that tourist-baiting is often punctuated with scoffing at the losers who stumble getting on and off the spinning floor. Of course, with several vanilla Absolut and Coke's on board, my subtle attempts at ingress and egress to and from the floor were a dead give-away that I lived about 1000 miles from Orlando. On the other hand, being the new boy does have certain advantages and with nothing better to do that be a bastard, I encouraged Dewayne to fuck with his ex-boyfriend who he's spotted off to one side of the bar and spent the rest of the night doing some ass-shaking disco moves all over Dewayne. I'd like to think I evoked a hot green streak of jealousy in the ex but then again, I'm sure he saw me almost take a final spill getting off that Hell's Turn-table for the last time and knew I was nothing if not a poseur. Regardless, Dewayne and Eric and Dan were peaches for giving me something to remember Orlando by other than the stucco.

I'm at the kitchen counter this morning having breakfast (as I've taken the day off work to deal with the worst flu/cold I've ever had, one that I no doubt caught from the plane-full of runny, snot-nosed kids on the way back from Orlando) only to look up out of our kitchen window to find a big black bear laying on its back, rolling in the grass, under the heavily endowed pear tree. Of course I jump up to grab the camera which I don't have, all the while watching Bobo the Dancing Bear shake the pear tree (which is going to be my new phrase meaning, "fuckin' awesome") for some snacks. It shook the pear tree.

I am nothing without my eccentricities, neuroses, and annoying knowledge about very little of general interest. Also, I am nothing without timing and that little itch to keep poking myself in the eye, figuratively, just to see if I can stand it and if it'll hurt the next time I do it. I know these truths about myself because today, as we're climbing to cruising altitude out of Pittsburgh, I open my current book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" which thus far, I've been enjoying immensely as it's sardonic, snarky, and full of black-humor about death only to come to chapter five: Beyond the Black Box: When the bodies of the passengers must tell the story of a crash. It's is EXACTLY a chapter about the bodies in plane crash disasters. A smarter person or at least one with less interest in causing themselves distress and non-medicated anxiety would simply put the book down or skip the chapter and go on to read about car crashes or crucifixion research or whatnot. To give myself some credit, I actually did utter a 'good grief' and consider it. Then I thought, "Fuck it, I'm in the air already...might as well find out if I have a chance of surviving." Succinctly, I do not. If the theoretical explosion doesn't impale me with life-rending shrapnel or the actual fire doesn't melt my lungs, then the fall from 35,000 feet most assuredly will do me in. And really there wasn't even comfort as the disaster-expert explained that were you still conscious after an explosion and dissembling of the plane in the air, someone probably wouldn't really even know what's going on...though to be sure, there has never been anyone alive afterwards to say for sure." Not helpful but I read the whole chapter anyway just because I like to torture myself in these small ways for no good reason.

I'm heading down to Orlando tomorrow for the rest of the week for a work thing. Why companies insist on sending us to warm, sunny, vacation destinations only to keep us cooped up in a hotel conference room all day is beyond me. Can't we do that in DesMoines? Fortunately, I'm skipping the questionable "Evening Under The Stars" themed dinner reception at Universal and heading out to see the sights with the wild Kentucky-transplant, All My Children-loving, Drum Core enthusiast, Dewayne. Knowing him from his blog, there can't help but be some stories.

Even though we only have about a 1/2 acre of lawn which we've dutifully mowed with a push mower for the last two years, Jeff has from day one dreamed of a riding lawn mower. I've mowed enough grass in my childhood to know our little place doesn't really warrant a riding mower but with the upcoming wood-splitting weekends where we need to haul wood around, we finally decided that we could get multiple uses out of a riding mower with a hitch and trailer so last night we stopped off at Sears for their end of the season sales and on Saturday when I get back from Orlando, this will be waiting for me. Right now, we're arguing over the name. Jeff thinks we should call it ‘Dundelay’ but since that's what I named the pig hanging on our bathroom wall, I'm leaning towards some kind of Finnish/Swedish Olympic Female gold-medalist name like 'Greta'. Discuss.

Current reading list: Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers, A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities; Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. I detect a pattern emerging.

I know no one can, will, or should relate to this but I just have to have a professional mini-rant: Don't you hate it when you start a research subject on a new research drug and then five days later they call you up complaining of breaking out in a rash so you bring them in to evaluate if the drug needs to be stopped and when they get here, there is not one red bump of a rash to be found anywhere? I do. I hate it a LOT.

I'm just saying.