Great Balls of Fire

More Local Fabulousness

2011-12-01T00:39:00.000-05:00

Last night I walked to the corner store to buy milk. It's been a while since I wandered through the business district of my neighborhood and it was nice. I read the menus on all the restaurants. I checked out the random flyers taped up on the utility poles. And of course I looked in the window of the antique store, Le Mix, which always has cool mid-century stuff.

It being late November, the window was all Christmas-y, with slightly creepy elf dolls and at least four Santa decorations that you remember from various aged relatives' houses. And there were some really neat old cocktail shakers in festive colors. Good thing for me the store was closed, because I already have way more cocktail shakers than I need.

Christmas Shopping, 2011 Edition

2011-11-28T23:05:00.000-05:00

So I spent "Small Business Saturday" slodging through chain stores buying stuff for myself. Completely against the spirit of the thing. But hey, I've been eating local vegetables all summer, that's got to count for something?

To atone for my sins against independent merchants, I will pimp a few of my recent discoveries.

Out Of Print Clothing
http://outofprintclothing.com/

Wizard of Oz kids' tee
at Out Of Print Clothing

I discovered these shirts while shopping at another fabulous independent merchant, Island Bookstore in Corolla, NC (which is actually a dream shop, everything you'd want in a bookstore all at once - too bad it's 400 miles from my house). But that's another post.

Out Of Print Clothing uses classic book cover art to make shirts, tote bags, note cards, and other fun things. (Edgar Alan Poe phone case anyone?) The images are all actually licensed, and they're pretty awesome. The shirts are soft and cozy. I have a Hound of the Baskervilles tee - I ended up with a men's small because none of the women's shirts really spoke to me, but it's stretchy and fits great.

If you need another excuse to shop here (or put one of these on your wish list), the company has partnered with Books for Africa to send a book to a needy community for every product purchased.

ARTECO
www.arteco.com

Closer to home, I've been seeing some cool jewelry and accessories from ARTECO. E-waste has never looked so good.

Spectra Cable Belt
from ARTECO

I picked up one of these cable belts at a recent Three Rivers Arts Festival - according to the card, it's a communication cable called Spectra that was popular around 1970. (I don't actually remember it but I've seen things like it.)

At this year's A Fair in the Park I looked through cards and cards of pendants, earrings, and pins trying to guess what they were in a former life. Luckily, the provenance is described on the packaging. The ARTECO website says "It's not only about what it is, but what it was." Turns out processor chips are sometimes really pretty!

Heat Sink Earrings
from ARTECO

A lot of the components are relatively unadorned, which I like. They're just fascinating to look at.

Come on, one of your techie forbears would really appreciate an 8-bit Intel processor tie tack.

ARTECO Intel 80186
Processor Pin

A Slate of Candidates You Can Trust

2010-10-28T11:55:00.005-04:00

A week or so before the election, the local political party (in Pittsburgh there is really only one) sends out a card with their endorsed slate of candidates. This is the card I got this year.

In case you don't want to zoom in and read the text, the third paragraph is most relevant. It says:

The candidates whose names appear on this ticket will not turn back the clock. These individuals will provide competent leadership while recognizing the fundamental values that make us Democrats. They also will be diligent regarding all issues which come before them. They will continue to move forward and lead us in our recovery from the failures of the past.

Sounds good. So who are these wonderful people? Here's the other side of the card:

2010-10-20T14:34:00.002-04:00

Him: Where did you put the other dish towel?
Me: It's over there.
Him: Where?
Me: On my secret shelf.
Him: What secret shelf?
Me: You know, the shelf where I keep the little cutting board that only I use, and the dish towels that I don't want you to dry your hands on, and the jars and bottlecaps I probably should have thrown away but I didn't.
Him: Oh, that shelf.

Augmented Reality - Tour de France Edition

2010-07-06T15:58:00.003-04:00

Or, How To Use Twitter To Watch the Tour de France

One of the things I love about Twitter is the fact that you can read commentary from other people while an event is going on. (When I was a teenager I occasionally created a low-tech version of this by watching TV over the phone - two friends in different houses, watching the same TV show.) I use it when watching hockey games, and it enhances my appreciation of the game. Other fans post insights and details I didn't know. And it's witty.

The same happens with the Tour de France, only the difference with pro cycling events is that instead of listening to other fans you're also reading news from the participants! A lot of pro cyclists and staff post on Twitter - and they're surprisingly candid. I've posted before about Kurt Asle Arvesen's photos of his road rash in a past Tour. Lance Armstrong has been tweeting almost every time he gets drug tested (though he arguably does have something to gain by that). Here's the photo Armstrong sent update this morning, before a seriously tough stage over cobblestone roads:

Deceiving Profile by Lance Armstrong

In the first few stages we had the Schleck brothers reporting on each other's injuries. First, Andy was in a minor crash and his brother Frank sent this:

@andy_schleck do U guys is that he is going to have a good sleep? Ich don t think so http://tweetphoto.com/31034360

Sadly, Frank had a more serious crash the next day. Still, Andy was there for us.

He need surgery http://tweetphoto.com/31160227

And also this, since his team kept the yellow jersey as overall leader:

@schleckfrank out with broken shoulder yellow is 4 him today!he be back stronger

Before you complain about their grammar, keep in mind that their first language is Luxembourgish - which I didn't even know existed until recently. So I think they're doing fine with English.

So here's a big list of Tour-related commentators on Twitter. Or you can just follow my public list for cycling (it has some of my friends on it too): http://twitter.com/#/list/erinkpgh/cycling or search Twitter for the #TdF tag.

Tour de France Cyclists on Twitter:

Lance Armstrong http://twitter.com/lancearmstrong
Frank Schleck http://twitter.com/schleckfrank
Andy Schleck http://twitter.com/andy_schleck
George Hincapie http://twitter.com/ghincapie
Carlos Sastre http://twitter.com/Carlos_Sastre
Bradley Wiggins http://twitter.com/bradwiggins
Christian Vande Velde http://twitter.com/ChristianVDV (Abandoned after crashing in Stage 2 - one of his last race tweets was "Who wants to see my eye?")
Ryder Hesjedal http://twitter.com/ryder_hesjedal
Levi Leipheimer http://twitter.com/LeviLeipheimer
Robbie McEwen http://twitter.com/mcewenrobbie
Dave Zabriskie http://twitter.com/dzabriskie

Twitter Cyclists Not In the 2010 Tour:

Kurt Asle Arvesen http://twitter.com/kaarvesen
Arvesen couldn't go for the Tour this year after crashing in the Tour de Suisse, but he seems to be having a nice time recuperating at home: http://yfrog.com/6fxpvbj
Fumiyuki Beppu http://twitter.com/Fumybeppu - I like to try to read his Japanese posts
Viatcheslav Ekimov http://twitter.com/eki_ekimov
Danny Pate http://twitter.com/UltraPate

Tour News Sources on Twitter:

Team Radio Shack http://twitter.com/TeamRadioShack
Cycling News http://twitter.com/Cyclingnewsfeed
Nike Chalkbot http://twitter.com/chalkbot (Today's photo of the Water Test is awesome - http://yfrog.com/4b58gj)
Road ID http://twitter.com/RoadID
Team HTC/Columbia http://twitter.com/HTCColumbia
Commentator Paul Sherwen http://twitter.com/PaulSherwen
Commentator Phil Liggett http://twitter.com/PhilLiggett
Team Director Johan Bruyneel http://twitter.com/johanbruyneel
Hincapie Sportswear http://twitter.com/hincapiesports

More Useful Websites:

Steephill.tv Tour de France Dashboard http://www.steephill.tv/tour-de-france/ - I especially like the team list (right sidebar a few inches down the page), which includes rider bib numbers.
Versus official TV coverage (caution: plays sound & video) http://www.versus.com/shows/tour-de-france/

Share and enjoy.

Two Pasta Recipes

2010-04-29T11:08:00.004-04:00

I was going grocery shopping and wanted to make sure I had all the ingredients for this pasta recipe I wanted to make, but instead of getting the recipe down from the messy folder on the top shelf in the kitchen to read the ingredients, I just searched the Internet. This usually works - you might not find the exact recipe you want, but you'll find something similar enough that you can determine the key ingredients.

Only I couldn't find anything like this recipe. So I started worrying that my pasta happiness relied on the 4-year-old printout I made from the Post-Gazette website. And it's the kind of ink that runs when it gets wet.

So here is the Pasta with Ricotta and Broccoli Rabe recipe, so I won't lose it.

Ingredients:

coarse salt and ground pepper
1.5 pounds (1-2 bunches) rapini (broccoli rabe), coarsely chopped
1 pound gemelli or other short pasta (whole wheat pasta is good too)
2 T olive oil
4 anchovy fillets (optional)
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 t red pepper flakes
15-ounce container part-skim ricotta cheese (1 2/3 cups)
1 cup milk

Boil rapini in a large pot of boiling salted water for 1 minute. Transfer to a colander using a slotted spoon. In the same pot of water, cook pasta until al dente according to package directions. Drain pasta and return to pot.

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add anchovy fillets, garlic, and pepper flakes. Cook, stirring, until fragrant (30-60 seconds). Add rapini and season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until tender - 5 to 6 minutes. Stir in ricotta and milk; cook just until heated through (3-4 minutes).

Add contents of skillet to pasta. Season with salt and pepper and toss to combine. Serve immediately.

Six servings with 472 calories, 12.5g fat, 23.7g protein, 67.5g carbohydrate, 2.4g fiber

And just because I like it and it's also pasta, here's another recipe. It's not so easy to forget.

Linguini with Zucchini and Chick Peas

Ingredients:

12 oz (3/4 box) linguini
2 T olive oil
3 small zucchini, cut into thin half-moons
kosher salt
15-oz can chickpeas, rinsed
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1/4 t crushed red pepper
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese (2oz)

Cook the pasta according to package directions. Reserve 1/2 cup of the pasta water, drain, and return the pasta to the pot.

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the zucchini and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Cook, tossing often, until just tender (4-5 minutes). Add the chickpeas, garlic, and red pepper and cook until heated through, 2-3 minutes.

Toss the pasta with the reserved pasta water and 1/4 cup of the Parmesan. Divide the pasta among bowls and top with the zucchini mixture and the remaining 1/4 cup of Parmesan

serves 4
from Real Simple August 2009 issue

Emergency Leak Control

2010-02-16T13:39:00.010-05:00

Drip Control System
Originally uploaded by erink

Since Snowpocalypse! hit Pittsburgh and brought us 2 feet of snow in 40 hours, followed by another five inches two days later and another five inches six days after that, a lot of people are dealing with leaky houses.

My first rental duplex had a flat roof, so I have years of experience dealing with ice dams. My current house, which is otherwise pretty great, has aged box gutters that have been leaking for two years (mostly because I put off fixing them after the high-priced roofer did a bad job). That means that when we get ice dams, water leaks in some of our window frames from the gutters.

An ice dam is ice that forms in your downspout. Snow melts under the ice on the roof because your house is warm, but with the downspout blocked, there's nowhere for it to go. If you're unlucky, it goes down, through your roof or gutter and into your house. Unless you can get the downspout unfrozen or remove all the snow and ice from your roof, it's going to keep leaking.

So, not much you can do outside until spring. But inside, there are a few techniques you can use to control the water.

Obviously, you want to deploy buckets. But it's tough to get the buckets right under all the drips, and even when you have a well-placed bucket, once it starts to fill up there's a lot of splashing, and that gets your floor wet too.

The solution is plastic. Dry cleaning bags work great, and trash bags are good too. (If you don't split the trash bags open to cover more area, you usually can reuse them for trash afterward.) If you have big problems, you can try those plastic painting drop cloths, as long as they're not too heavy for the tape.

Here's what to do.

Tape the plastic bag up on the wall or window so that the dripping water falls onto it. You can use multiple pieces of plastic if you overlap the top piece in front of the bottom piece so the water falls down onto the second piece.
Make a plastic highway to the collection area (bucket or trash can or whatever). You actually can move the bucket several feet from the leak, as long as the bucket is the lowest point in the system and there's a clean path to the bucket.
Watch the water flow. If it's dripping off an edge, try to curl the plastic inward so that it funnels the water back toward the center.
If you still have trouble with splashing, move the bucket farther away from the wall. The more gradual slope will slow the water down and minimize splashes. Make sure you don't create a low point on the way to the bucket.

Here are some details of the drip collection system in my TV room.

The plastic is taped to the window frame with scotch tape. You can see the brown spots where the water was dripping. (Click through for a larger version on Flickr.)

Here is the bottom of the system. I had water leaking from underneath the bottom of the windowsill so I taped up another bag there. I used masking tape there because I was afraid Scotch tape would tear the paint (still not sure the masking tape won't, but whatever). I had to wait until the wall was dry to get the tape to stick. This picture also shows the transition from dry-cleaning plastic to trash bag. I taped the trash bag to the window to catch another drip, but you can just tape it to the top bag (it is also taped to the dry-cleaning bag, but that's hard to see).

If you're going to be away for a while, you can use a trash can instead of buckets, it holds more water. Also, drips usually stop a few hours after dark when the roof water refreezes, so that gives you a chance to regroup. But don't leave your bucket out of the system for long!

I've often wondered if strings would be useful, but I've never tried it. For example, if you have a drip on the ceiling can you tack up a string and get the water to preferentially run down the string into a bucket?

Oh, another few tips. If you can access your roof or gutters by leaning out a window (carefully!), you can sometimes help clear the ice. A hockey stick is a great tool for this. We use my old stick to flick ice out of the gutters and to chop up the ice into flippable pieces. Be careful not to damage your shingles, or to clobber someone on the ground. We also pour warm water into the gutters to melt the downspouts. After the first storm we were alternating pouring in buckets of water and pumping the standing water out of the downspouts with a tiny battery-operated pump (you could also use a straight siphon or a drill-mounted pump).

There are gutter heater cables you can use to help melt ice from your roof shingles and downspouts. They're not much help once the ice is up there, you have to have a roofer install them ahead of time.

So, hope this is helpful - or at least amusing.

Quest for Paczki - 2010 Edition

2010-02-16T10:30:00.000-05:00

Much easier than last year. But still not as good as Jenny Lee's.

Joys of Working From Home

2010-02-08T13:14:00.003-05:00

This is literally what just happened to me.

Every room in my house is nice and cozy, except the kitchen, which has two outside walls and a tile floor (and a bit of a draft around the floor). But the kitchen has the best light and a nice clear workspace, so I decide to work there. It's 12 degrees outside, so my feet are cold. I go upstairs to get a pair of socks.

On the way to my socks, I notice that the window in the TV room has started dripping again. We have elderly box gutters and were in denial about the drips for a year or so, which means that when snow starts melting from the sun, there are a few places where the water backs up and seeps through the box gutters and into the house at the window frame below the gutter. And we got 20" of snow on Friday night. I have a vast knowledge of how to rig dry-cleaning bags and buckets to deal with the drips, and we lean out the windows of the third floor clearing ice with a hockey stick and buckets of warm water. When you hear great crashing sounds, you know the downspouts are clearing and you're done.

So I head up to the third floor and start clearing the gutter above the TV room window. That goes pretty well, a little ice flicking and about four buckets of water, and I hear crashing sounds and the water drains well. I go to check on the other problem gutter, spend some time pitching ice out of it, and decide to use the tiny battery-operated pump (which I bought but never used for the basement flooding that has since been fixed) to drain some standing water out of that gutter. Okay. Third floor secured.

So I head downstairs to check on the TV room. And a mysterious water disaster has occurred. The bucket is askew and apparently a gallon or two of water has pooled on the carpet and run into the room, stopping to get soaked up by the big floor pillow we have there. Replace the bucket, pick up the floor pillow and get it drying in the bathroom, deploy all the ShamWows (you'll say "wow" every time!) I can find, along with some towels. Run downstairs to the basement twice, once for a plastic shelf gadget to get the bucket off the wet carpet and once for a fan to help the carpet dry. Hang soaked ShamWows in the bathroom to dry.

Check on the bedroom window for drips. Still dry.... Count my blessings. The front of the house didn't get much sun today.

Okay, everything's drying, nothing's actively dripping except some stragglers in the TV room that are going into the bucket. I need to change the wet band-aid on my thumb (I cut myself mysteriously while digging out my car yesterday). Okay. Back to the kitchen to work.

My feet are cold.

A Christmas Lesson

2009-12-25T22:51:00.002-05:00

I loved this video. It really defused the jewelry ads for me too - apparently, it's possible that someone can actually love me and NOT buy me a diamond tennis bracelet (which I wouldn't use and ordinarily don't want at all). Now they're just funny.

Exotic Candies of Utah - Annabell's Look!

2009-11-09T22:04:00.002-05:00

Annabell's Look!
Originally uploaded by erink

One of the unexpected perks of driving all around the southwest for vacation was finding regional candy in the gas station convenience stores!

Annabell's LOOK! was pretty tasty. It's nougat with dark chocolate on the outside and some tiny pieces of peanut embedded in there somewhere.

This is what it looks like on the inside:

Stay tuned for reviews of more nougat-based and cherry-flavored delicacies from the exotic southwest.

New phone...

2009-10-09T13:44:00.001-04:00

Last post from my non smart phone!

Happy Hocktober!

2009-10-02T09:48:00.005-04:00

To celebrate the opening of the NHL season, I give you:

Bears Playing Hockey

Living in the modern world, we don't have a good idea of how dexterous bears are, and how capable they are on two legs. I've seen old film of them riding bikes and doing all sorts of difficult tricks. Trained bears were part of Russian circus tradition until very recently, although they're very rare now (for good reasons). This looks to be a mid- to late 20th century European show.

Not many skill players on this squad, but if you make it to about 1:50, there's a fight! Close enough for me.

Protest This

2009-09-24T19:15:00.006-04:00

(A stealth G-20 post.)

I was reading a story in the Post-Gazette just now and it's talking about some of the protesters out for the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh today. And they interviewed this fellow:

"I want to be part of a moment," said Sam Brown, 22, of Sewickley.

Mr. Brown is a recent graduate of Wheaton College in Massachusetts, where he majored in art history and Asian studies. Now the poor economy has forced him to move back with his mother in the Pittsburgh suburbs, he said, and he scours craigslist every day for jobs.

All I can think is, Dude, it's not the economy.

(The whole story: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09266/1000288-53.stm)

On Litter

2009-09-21T20:42:00.009-04:00

A week ago I spent a few Saturday morning hours picking up trash along the highway near my house. It was a volunteer project supposedly related to the G-20 Summit coming to town late this week, though I have my doubts foreign dignitaries will be cruising I-376 between Forest Hills and Edgewood. Whatever. You know, company's coming, yinz gotta redd up n'at.

Here's what I found:

Most common litter by far: Cigarette butts. There were just hundreds per square yard, outnumbering and possibly even outmassing all the other litter. No, we didn't try to pick them up. Somehow cigarette butts get a special status that makes them not litter in the eyes of smokers ... except they are.

I remember this being a big problem on the beach at Waikiki. There were signs all over telling you to pick up your butts. I think if you dug down to any level of beach sand there you would find cigarette butts in waxing and waning layers depending on how fashionable smoking was in past years.

I was trying to figure out ways to get rid of the butts. Maybe instead of paying the new fines for smoking in public areas we should give offenders the choice of community service picking up cigarette butts for a few hours? Can we invent a special tool to pick them up by the shovelful? Or could we put a deposit on them and/or offer a bounty? (We could tag each butt so you can count a big trash bag full electronically, right?)
Number two most common trash by the roadside: Plastic car parts. They're everywhere. From little pieces of plastic to entire bumpers - there's even a ditch along the stretch we were working that I named the valley of forgotten bumpers because there were about eight partial front-ends down there.
Number three trash category: Drink containers. There weren't as many bottles and cans as I expected, and this category includes a lot of fast-food cups and cup lids. Which do biodegrade, by the way, they get really brittle and fracture when you pick them up.
I expected a lot of those floss-picks since you see them all the time in parking lots. (I mean really, what is the trigger in the grocery store parking lot that causes people to suddenly think about dental hygiene? And why can't they use the trash can afterward?) But I only found one. The personal hygiene product that was the surprise winner: Q-Tips. I picked up five or ten of them.
The area with most trash was the entrance ramp. Lots of bags and large items. It's like they have to dump ballast to get up to highway speed.
Styrofoam coolers are not a good thing to put in the back of your pickup truck. Even the plastic ones can get away from you.
Road maintenance crews are not tidy. I didn't really expect them to be. They pour asphalt right over the trash and leave bolts everywhere when they replace the guide rail.

Though I thought the entire set of truck lug nuts and bolts was interesting, the only piece of trash I actually brought home was a large broken glass fragment almost 1" on each side. Trust me, I showed remarkable restraint.

So, I've done my part for the city's reputation. Don't you jagoffs mess it up again before Thursday!

Cigarette butt photo by Flickr user multisanti; some rights reserved.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tikun/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Plus Size Doctor

2009-08-28T17:08:00.001-04:00

Plus Size Doctor
Originally uploaded by erink

Saw this in the craft store - in case you're inspired to dress up as an overweight physician for Halloween, they've got you covered!

How To Eat Produce At Home

2009-08-18T15:11:00.006-04:00

A friend of mine was envying our farm share and our ability to turn it in to food. (Actually we have a mutual friend who does much better - our last eggplant rotted; she made baba ghanouj.) Hitting a farm market once a week or once a month is a good low-commitment option, but you still need to figure out how to work fresh food into your routine. Here are some ideas that work in my house.

Salad

Salad is a no-brainer, and even though I don't really like it a lot it's a good addition to most meals or a good quick meal on its own.

First, buy a head of lettuce. Romaine is my favorite. When you get home, wash each leaf and cut them up into pieces about 3 square inches apiece. You can tear it if you don't want to cut it, but cutting is fine. Put the pieces into your salad spinner (yes you need this) and dry them. Store the prepared lettuce in a large plastic container with a piece of paper towel on the bottom. The paper towel helps keep the moisture right in the container so the lettuce will keep for a week or more. This way you can grab a few handfuls when it's time to assemble your salad. Yeah, you can buy the bag lettuce at the store, but this is usually better.

Tomatoes - All my salads need tomatoes. Keep them out of the fridge, because tomatoes have a flavor chemical that degrades in the cold. I just wash the one I'm using right before I cut it up for the day's salad. Cherry tomatoes are an option too if you want to be able to control portion size (though I never have a problem getting rid of excess tomato after making a salad!)

Broccoli or Cauliflower - Broccoli is another requirement for my salads, and farm broccoli is way better than grocery store broccoli. Like the lettuce, you can get a bunch of broccoli and prep it that day then keep the salad-sized pieces in a plastic bin in the fridge for a week or more. Just cut the tops off and throw the stems away (unless you're crazy about broccoli stems, I'm not). I like to cut them really small, about 1" square or less, so they fit on the fork.

These are the minimal ingredients for a decent salad for me. These parts go without saying:

Fresh black pepper
Good dressing (Ken's Steak House Lite Balsamic Vinaigrette is my go-to dressing, but I also bought a nice Caesar recently)
Pepitas or sunflower seeds

More things you can put in salad to make it good:

Parsley - cut it up with kitchen scissors and mix it in with the lettuce
Carrots - I'm not a big fan, but lots of people like this. Slice it or dice it small so it's not too hard to chew.
Celery
Cucumber - especially good with a ranch or bleu cheese dressing
Onion - red or white sweet onions, chopped or sliced
Pickled beets
Hard boiled egg - you get to use those neat wire egg slicers for this!
Tuna - if I'm making a meal salad I just drain a can and dump it on. When I'm eating it I tag-team between eating a little tuna and eating some lettuce and other stuff.
Cottage cheese - again, I just dump it on and tag-team.
Cheese - somehow I don't do this often, but sliced up swiss or muenster is yummy.
Chick peas or other canned beans - you probably want to rinse them
Leftover vegetables - the other day we cut up our leftover wax beans and they were yummy in salad. Might have been the butter....
Nuts or other seeds
Grapes, raisins (ew - not my thing) , or sliced apples

Cooked Vegetables

Most veggies can either be steamed in the microwave or sauteed in a frying pan. Tough greens like kale, chard, and collards are better in a pan. To sautee them, cut up the vegetables (take out the stems of those greens, or just start them earlier than the leaves to make sure they get softened enough), put them in a pan with some olive oil or butter and salt and pepper. Use medium heat and cook until they're soft (probably like 3 minutes for spinach but 8 or 9 for kale).

When steaming (broccoli, beans, asparagus) I usually just put them in a glass bowl and leave them wet after I rinse them. You might want a little more water depending on how much food there is. I have a plastic microwave cover that keeps a little extra steam in. Try 2-3 minutes to start, then keep going until your veggies are as soft as you want them.

Fresh fennel bulb is great sauteed. Also zucchini and yellow zucchini (is that a squash?), slice them up and season them with a little cumin. I think it's cumin...?

Veg and Rice Dinner - one of my big excuses for eating white rice! But you can do a more nutritious grain if you want (brown rice, quinoa, etc.) or even pasta like couscous. Basically I cook up some veggies and a pot of rice, then just chuck the veg on top of a bowl of rice with some soy sauce and sesame seeds. This is really good with chard or kale, or broccoli, or beans (I mean green beans or yellow beans).

Rice microwaves surprisingly well. So if you do a big pot of rice you can keep the leftovers in the fridge (with your leftover sauteed fennel) and put together a leftover meal really quickly.

Fruit

Yeah, it's not a huge burden to eat fruit, but sometimes looking at a big peach just seems like too much of a commitment. Also I don't like the fuzzy part. I found out that if I cut them up I like them better.

I keep a tiny cutting board next to the sink for cutting up fruits before I eat them. It's easy to rinse off and re-stow. You'll also need a paring knife, which is not expensive. In the spring I hull and slice a lot of strawberries for my cereal. (But now it's blueberry season and they're a lot easier than strawberries because you can wash them all at once and then put them back in their box in the fridge. Strawberries rot faster after you wash them so it's better to wash them when you use them.)

A yummy dessert or snack (or breakfast): cut up fruit (nectarine, peach, pear, etc.) or berries and throw them in a small bowl with some yogurt or cottage cheese. Ice cream makes a good dairy medium too. You can put in nuts or raisins or granola or wheat germ too. And a little sugar or honey is no crime if the yogurt is too sour. There's always banana to sweeten up the mix too.

I haven't quite got the hang of eating melons. I think the key is to cut up the whole thing when you get it.

Share and Enjoy!

So, that is my advice on how to eat produce at home. I'm no cook, but it's not that hard when you get the hang of it. You still throw things away, but at least maybe you'll use some of them!

Farm Share 8/11/09

2009-08-12T10:39:00.002-04:00

Farm Share 8/11/09
Originally uploaded by erink

Someone asked about my farm share the other day, and I haven't posted anything about it for a while. This is what we got in our box from Kretschmann this week:

A bunch of beets
One onion (I cut off the top because it was in bad condition, but apparently there's stuff you can do with it if it's not)
Two green peppers
Four tomatoes (of moderate quality) - apparently there's a "late blight" causing farmers in the region to lose a bunch of tomatoes this year ... Bummer. So much for my insalata caprese dreams. I still have hope for my plants, though a friend four blocks away just lost his tomato patch.
Lettuce - this week we got two bunches of something like romaine.
Chard
One tiny watermelon
Green beans
A bunch of curly parsley
Carrots
Two cucumbers

Seriously, Microsoft?

2009-07-20T17:44:00.005-04:00

I am more than pissed off by these Bing commercials.

The premise is that web searches are no good at restricting their results to what you actually meant. And that's just not true. It hasn't been true for ten years. Get over it!

If search engines were that annoying they wouldn't be so popular. Millions of us would not be using a search-created homepage. Search works great. The only thing pissing me off about search engines now is Bing's marketing campaign.

This is fun, though. http://blindsearch.fejus.com/

Garlic Flower

2009-07-17T10:20:00.005-04:00

Garlic Flower
Originally uploaded by erink

One of our farm shares two weeks ago included a garlic bulb with a stem attached that was like 5' long. Seriously. Well, at least four feet.

We kept it like that for a few days, because it was cool looking. Then eventually the beau cut the garlic off the bottom and put it on the counter where we keep garlic. But we didn't throw out the stem yet, because, well, it was cool looking.

A few days on, the flower bud at the top started opening. So I recut the stem and put it in a little vase. (The stem is down to about 3' now.)

The flower is only about as big as a quarter.

Our other farm share has been giving us garlic scapes, which are just the stem part. You can use them in salads and eggs and stuff, they're garlic-flavored and a bit more dense than green onions. But now I'm thinking maybe we should make them all into flowers.

Tiny Spiders

2009-07-16T12:58:00.002-04:00

Tiny Spiders
Originally uploaded by erink

Something new turned up in the window box this morning.

They look like spiders, but I'm not sure. They might not have enough legs.

I kind of prefer them to the really big caterpillars that ate the petunias the last few seasons, and they're better than the ragweed that started growing in one of the other boxes. As long as I have window screens. Anyway, they didn't stay long.

Vive La Tour (or Cyclists Are Crazy Too)

2009-07-14T11:10:00.006-04:00

Obsessively watching the Tour de France again. Here's a story from Stage 9 (Sunday).

Stage 9 was the last in the Pyrenees. There's a big HC (unclassifiable) climb, a peak named Tourmalet, about 3/4 of the way through the course. The descent just after the summit is a little tricky, down a narrow twisty mountain road. The riders went over in a few groups, two guys in the front, and then a group of 7 or 10 guys, and then the peloton (main field), followed by about half the race, who couldn't keep up on the climb, in variously sized groups of stragglers.

By the way, you might not want to be eating when you scroll down. I'm just saying.

Laurens ten Dam is a dutch rider who went over the summit with the second group. Apparently, he crashed like hell just after that. The TV didn't have video of the crash, but it looked like it must have been pretty impressive. This is what ten Dam looked like when he got back on the course:

This is a screen grab from a video I found on YouTube (here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qeU2HlDZFA) but I think you can still see the dirt and the fact that his jersey is shredded. He's also ripped up his left elbow and knee.

See, in the Tour, you don't get an injury time out. If you can't finish the stage, you're done. You go home. If you finish too slow, you're done. So you just have to go. In one early stage I saw a guy crash and ride the last 20 miles anyway with a broken wrist. Oh, my mistake - the TV just did a recap of injuries and it was Robert Gesink, and he actually rode 75 kilometers (46 miles) with a broken wrist. Right now I'm watching Kurt-Asle Arvesen, who's been grimacing and riding slow since a crash about 10 km earlier, hanging on to the doctor's car trying to decide if there's anything he can do to finish the last 40 km.

Actually ten Dam's crash probably wasn't very bad. It looks like he hit dirt pretty quickly, which is better than pavement, and he slid on his back a lot, which is better than sliding on your arms and legs. Oh, and though he didn't catch up to his breakaway group he rode the rest of the stage with the peloton no problem.

So here's the fun part. Laurens ten Dam is on Twitter.

Twitter is actually a great thing when it comes to connecting to "famous" people - or at least people with an inside view of things you see on TV. I follow two Mythbusters, NHL staff, some NHL players, Penn and Teller (he's actually quite chatty), and a bunch of pro cyclists. Especially for cycling, where there isn't a big US media presence, there isn't a lot of pressure for them to watch what they say. I mean, they do, of course, they're professionals, but also you get a lot of visibility into their lives. Like what they ate for dinner, problems with hotels and non-air-conditioned buses, and pictures of Levi Leipheimer in fluffy slippers.

Here's the photo Laurens ten Dam posted after Stage 9.

This is what you call "road rash." He also posted that the team doctor had to go shopping for more supplies.

Apparently the worst part of an injury like this is when you go to sleep, and you wake up and the sheets are stuck to you. Because, you know, your skin tends to ooze when it's like this.

So, road cyclists are officially crazy in my book too.

And you can read all about it on Twitter.

Vive la Tour.

Laurens ten Dam's Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/laurenstendam
Laurens ten Dam's photos: http://twitpic.com/photos/laurenstendam

Cow and Girls

2009-07-11T11:06:00.002-04:00

Cow and Girls
Originally uploaded by erink

Was it "take your daughter to your underpaying, degrading work day"?

Bicycle Bell Ringtone

2009-07-10T10:39:00.004-04:00

Found this in the Bike Pittsburgh blog. A local artist has been collecting sounds and publishing them as ringtones (for free!). She included this bike bell from one of the Bike Pittsburgh organizers.

http://www.locallytoned.org/tone/93

The bell, by the way, is wicked cool. Erok says he got it at Free Ride.

Bike Pittsburgh: http://bike-pgh.org/

The Number of Miroslav

2009-06-18T13:14:00.005-04:00

Just a small thing, really, but one that should be known.

So there's this hockey player, Miro Satan. Yeah, Satan, but it's not pronounced like, you know, the devil; since he's Czech, it's got a sh- sound at the beginning.

Satan came to play for Pittsburgh last year as part of the neverending quest for Sid's winger. It didn't work out too well and Satan ended up getting sent down to Wilkes-Barre this spring to give the team salary cap room. But he took it well, went down and worked hard and helped out the youngsters, and then he came back up and had some good games for us in the playoffs.

Now. There's this website. Yahoo Sports includes data on all the NHL players. If you search for some player's name you will probably find his Yahoo Sports page which has his stats and news and such. And the URL for that page will be in the form "http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/players/[some random number]"

Only I don't think it's always a random number. Because to pull up data on Miroslav Satan, the number you have to put in there is "666".

I probably just made some database webmonkey's day by noticing.

Miroslav Satan on Yahoo Sports

First Week Farm Share

2009-06-02T16:56:00.003-04:00

First box from Kretschmann Farms.

Fuck Censorship

2009-05-21T10:02:00.008-04:00

I heard via Twitter this morning that Christopher Handley has pled guilty to obscenity charges related to his manga collection. Handley got in trouble when an Iowa postmaster inspected a shipment of comics from Japan and decided to involve the police.

Handley faces a $250,000 maximum fine, up to 15 years in prison, and forfeiture of property siezed in the case, which I'm not sure but could be his entire collection. What's more, before the trial Handley was harassed by the state: as conditions of his release (while still "innocent") he had to turn over his computer to the investigators, agree to random inspections of his home, and submit to periodic drug tests. When the prosecutors learned that he was still visiting anime-related sites on the internet and had viewed some cheesecake-level Japanese fashion books (with adult models) they ordered him to cut it out, and to submit to mental health counseling.

The problem with Handley's collection is that it included a few drawn images of under-age characters in sexual situations. This set off the child porn detectors, despite the fact that no actual children were required to create the material.

Handley's collection included 1,200 manga comics, plus hundreds of DVDs, laser disks, and video tapes. The case focused on a few hundred images - I heard 150 to 300 individual pictures - that were considered to be obscene. This guy was not a porn collector, he was a manga collector. I'm sure I have objectionable material of the same sort in my house right now, and probably at the same rate.

It should be said that icky sexual situations are not terribly uncommon in Japanese popular art. Seriously, schoolgirl sex, rape, some nasty stuff with tentacles (well, also some hot stuff with tentacles) - all are tolerated much more by Japan than we would do in the US. Especially in anime and manga, which can provide a completely fantasy-based environment. Why do they look at that stuff? I don't know. But you don't have to find it titilating to find it culturally interesting.

Neil Gaiman covers this pretty well in this blog post: Why defend freedom of icky speech? In this post, Gaiman responds to a fan's well-reasoned argument that simulated child porn is potentially damaging with examples from literature, history, and even the bible. Yes, it's basically the slippery slope argument, but it's well done.

So. This is dumb. It's not the only dumb thing our government has done, but it shouldn't happen. There are lots more stories of woe you can read at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and while you're there you should make a nice donation too.

Here's the CBLDF news releases about this case:
CBLDF Disappointed By Guilty Plea in Handley Manga Case (May 2009)
CBLDF To Serve As Special Consultant In PROTECT Act Manga Case (October 2008)

And here's some more information from another blogger: MangaBlog - Editorial: The Handley case and the slippery slope

Project A-Ko DVD sleeve image from Amazon.com - there's actually no sex in this film at all, but what's going on with that skirt?

One GoodThing About Philly

2009-04-28T11:30:00.000-04:00

It's this guy: David Leonardi, the Sign Man.

(Photo copyright Getty Images.)

He's been doing this since 1972, when he got season ticket seats in the second row. The article and a link to a video interview are here on the Flyers website. (The video is worth checking out, it has his footage from the Flyers locker room when they won the cup in 1974 and shots of him and his wife showing up in their wedding clothes.)

He even came to Pittsburgh last year to mock the Pens in person during the Eastern Conference Finals (though he was presumably not involved in this legendary signage incident, one of my favorites). He taunted Fleury for "spin[ning] like a ballerina" during stoppages, among other things.

I love stuff like this. It takes effort. Unlike Philly's modern favorite, "Crosby sucks," you actually have to know the game and the players to come up with this kind of quality put-downs.

Vince Lascheid had it. The Civic Arena organist who died last month at 85 had a large repertoire of musical taunts, as well as pun-related theme songs for most of the Penguins stars. When the ref made a bad call, he threw out a few bars of the carol "Do You See What I See?" or, in extreme cases, "Three Blind Mice." (Back in those days of one ref and two linesmen this was an especially good choice.)

So it's great to see Leonardi going strong. This is old time taunting. The modern NHL could use a few more like him.

Great Balls of Fire

2009-04-22T13:32:00.004-04:00

A few of my readers (well, actually I only have a few...at most) might remember that this blog title is based on a catchphrase used by Pittsburgh Penguins announcer Mike Lange.

Well, you can hear the illustrious Mr. Lange deliver his line here:
http://www.myxer.com/partner/7975109/
You can even buy it as a ringtone for your cell phone (though I'm sticking with the South Park Underpants Gnomes song, thank you).

In case you were curious. And never listened to Mike Lange call a Penguins game.

Confusingly, the URL is a different catchphrase, which isn't one of the ringtones. You can get the whole story here, in a strangely dated post from a time when the Penguins didn't make the playoffs:
http://sellmymonkey.blogspot.com/2006/02/she-wants-to-sell-my-monkey.html

Or-Durves

2009-04-21T22:17:00.002-04:00

Why the heck do we use that phrase, hors-d'oeuvres? It's really hard. Every time I have to write it I have to look it up - and I actually know French.

Isn't there some other word we could call those things? Snacks? Sounds too "after-school". Appetizers? But that implies that more food is coming later, and usually if you invite someone for hors d'oeuvres you're not feeding them anything more.

What does that even mean? I think oeuvre is like a work of art. (I vaguely remember some pretentious use of this term to describe the entire body of work of a film creator, but film criticism has always had these French land mines like auteur and mise-en-scene.) Hors doesn't mean what it sounds like, it means outside.

So hors d'oeuvres are outside art. Does that mean they suck?

Seriously. It's just un-called-for.

Office Food Safety

2009-04-16T22:16:00.003-04:00

Important rules from the Mythbusters workplace.

Lessons from LA

2009-04-16T15:03:00.007-04:00

What I learned on my April vacation:

At "classy" hotels you have to pay $15/day for internet access. At "budget" hotels it's free. This is why nobody heard from me for three days while I stayed at the Biltmore and then I resurfaced when we moved to a Holiday Inn in San Diego.

Two-Headed Turtle
Originally uploaded by erink

Apparently two-headed turtles are not terribly uncommon. There's a little freak show on Venice Beach (an official one, I'm not just talking about the general ambiance). For $3 you can go into a little room with lots of displays of animals with extra limbs and such. They had a nice collection of cabinet cards, a bunch of skeletons (some gaffes) two two-headed turtles, a two-headed snake, a naked mole rat, and a dog with an extra foreleg. Oh, there was a sword-swallower too.

Seat covers are "provided by the management for my protection" - but against what?

Pinkberry is way good. They sell frozen yogurt with your choice of toppings, but the best thing is the yogurt tastes like yogurt! And it's not too sweet. Can we have one? I wouldn't mind a World Market in western PA either....

I've watched too much Kitchen Nightmares. Gordon Ramsey inhabited my body for a few minutes when our waiter (at a slightly pretentious place in San Diego) used some sort of torture device to decant our wine. It was a huge production. You had to put the wine in this frame, and light a flame underneath the neck of the bottle, and then turn a crank to make the bottle horizontal. (I'm not sure what the flame was supposed to accomplish, since it was on for about 60 seconds while the waiter decanted the whole bottle into a glass carafe.) The closest I can find is this. I just kept hearing Gordon's voice in my head - and he was saying, "Fuck me!"

Vaud and the Villains - way cool. Not sure they will translate well on a recording and I'm pretty sure they can't tour, but if you are in LA any time soon you must go and see them.

Our zoo is pretty good, but the San Diego Zoo is much better. All the enclosures are nice, they have more types of animals, and the critters are a lot more fun to watch somehow. I think they trick them into being active on Saturday afternoons just for us. There were a lot of baby animals, which helps, and a lot of "enrichment activities" going on - so the animals have things to do and that's a lot more fun than watching them sleep all day. One relative failure, though, the signage and documentation is better at Pittsburgh.

In southern California, rain is weird. It rained a little while we were in the slightly pretentious restaurant, and the staff warned us to "be careful" because of that when we left.

Pike Place roast sucks so much. It keeps me away from Starbucks in the afternoon. At Dulles I walked a mile to get to Starbuck's and all they had was Pike Place Roast (even though it was 7 a.m. - what's up with that?) But we got breakfast from Five Guys and it was very yummy.

Bird-of-Paradise
Originally uploaded by erink

Bird of Paradise flowers can grow in the ground. I thought they came from flower shops (for $15 a stem).

The Glories of Regent Square

2009-03-26T11:38:00.002-04:00

My neighborhood's a great place to live, so I'm sure its reputation will survive the teaser description for this story:

A city police sergeant was wrong to cite a Regent Square man for flipping him off in 2006.

The whole thing: /www.post-gazette.com/pg/09083/957786-85.stm

Wonders of Canada

2009-03-13T13:10:00.000-04:00

First, I found out a few weeks ago that you can get takoyaki in Toronto. Takoyaki, in case you didn't know, is a fried octopus fritter that you get as street food in Japan. It's yummy, as is its cousin, tako-sen (takoyaki squished between potatoey crackers with Kewpie Doll mayonnaise). Apparently this place is pretty good http://manpuku.ca/ and according to Chowhound (http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/100248) there are even more places that make takoyaki and such in the area. Thank heavens. I thought I was going to have to go to New Jersey.

Now I find out about another treasure they're hiding up north. They have special hockey-themed Oreos! Lucky I started following goaliegirl on Twitter or I might never have found out.

Here's a photo of the cookies themselves:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/squeakybear/3260541299/

Here's a portfolio web page from the company that did packaging:
http://www.davisdesign.ca/portfolio/promotions

I might have to start reading #nhlcookiesmuggler

Turning Japanese

2009-03-12T09:54:00.003-04:00

I've always wrapped my bathrobe right over left. Don't know why, I always just felt right that way and wrong the other way. I mean, for years, my whole life.

In Japan, you always wrap your clothes left over right. I don't know why, maybe nobody really knows why, but that's how you do it. Like so many Japanese things, there's only one right way to do it. Supposedly, when you dress the dead you dress them the other way. (If I'm worried I did it wrong I ask my friends if I'm dead.)

So lately I've been playing a lot with my SCA friends, many of whom have Japanese persona or at least go that way once in a while (check us out at http://yamakaminari.com/). And we hosted a spiffy Japanese-themed event at the end of February. And I made a new Japanese outfit for the event, with real silk and brocade (and a new sewing machine), and it even matches my gender and everything.

And then I put my bathrobe on again. I go through phases of wearing it or not wearing it - in fact, last week I dug it out because I was watching It Happened One Night and I wanted to be like Clark Gable, all classy with my pajamas _and_ a robe. And last week, for some reason, I wrapped it left over right. Just automatically. Then I did it again the next time I put it on. And again.

Last night, I tried wrapping it right over left (the old "right" way) and it was really awkward.

So, something has changed. Am I turning Japanese? I have been eating a lot of pickles.... But for whatever reason I guess I'll be wrapping the bathrobe the other way for a while.

It's not a bad deal, actually. I found a whole breast pocket in this robe that I never noticed before!

Quest for Paczki - 2009 Edition

2009-02-24T12:58:00.008-05:00

When I worked downtown, I learned about paczki from Jenny Lee Bakery in Market Square.

Paczki (the singular is paczek) are basically filled donuts. But they're special Polish Fat Tuesday donuts. The theory is that you have to make pastries to use up all your lard and sugar and stuff, because you don't use those during Lent.

Traditionally, paczki come in lemon, raspberry, sometimes custard, and - the best part - lekvar, which is prune paste. There's actually a great flavor interplay between the donut glaze and the mildly sweet prune paste. Also you can only eat one or two before you get full.

Last year Jenny Lee Bakery closed forever. I woke up this morning and heard New Orleans music on the radio and thought, damn, no paczki? (Well, even if Jenny Lee were open, it would have been too late to get any there by 9 a.m., but I would have gone before.)

So after an early appointment on the South Side I went on a quest for paczki.

First, I cruised part of E. Carson St., because I'd heard there once was a bakery there that made them. But even when I went there five years ago they weren't apparently open, and now it's gone completely.

I looped around and headed for Homestead.

Last year on a quest for donuts I'd heard of a place called A+B Donuts. It's on 8th Avenue in Homestead across from the Waterfront shopping mall - but you can't get there from the mall. When I went last year, the place was closed but promised it would re-open. So I drove by today. The cute little donut shop part is up for sale (which is unfortunate, I hear it's cool-looking inside), but the bakery side is open every day except Monday. No paczki, but I got some other awesome-looking donuts.

As I was pulling out from my illegal parking space in front of A+B, I noticed there was a Shop N' Save across the road. There is actually a whole little "locals" mall there on the other side of the tracks from Waterfront, with a Rite Aid, and a Big Lots, and a Shop N' Save. It's hard to find Shop N' Save in the East End, which is overrun with Giant Eagle, so I went in to have a look. Paczki! But no prune. I settled for a box of raspberry, but my quest continued to find the one true paczek.

Oh yeah, I got some wasabi peas there too.

Saturday night we'd come through Homestead on our way back from a strange theater (we had to go out to Century III land to see Coraline in 3D) and passed Nancy B Bakery (actually a sign saying that the closed road was open as far as the bakery) so I was thinking to stop by. I was not really expecting paczki, but they have "world renowned chocolate chip cookies" and how bad could that be? Unfortunately Nancy B's is always out of chocolate chip cookies unless you pre-order. I told the lady at the counter that I'd never had one, and she went looking in the back and brought me a "second" - free! It is yummy. They also have other good cookies too - those crescent-shaped nut cookies are pretty awesome. So I bought some cookies there.

Last stop: Giant Eagle. Giant Eagle tries to be all things to all people, and I'm people, so I thought it was worth a shot. Actually I'd found prune paczki there before, last year or the year before, but different stores get different baked goods, so I wasn't sure the Edgewood one would have them. It did, and even had a sign about what they are and how to pronounce them! But they were out of prune, so I didn't buy any. But here's a picture of the display anyway.

So, no lekvar, but I will manage a fair amount of lard and sugar today, and even eat some "official" paczki. Though they're not as good as Jenny Lee's.

Finally, Exercise for Geeks.

2009-02-04T01:04:00.000-05:00

Star Wars Yoga.
http://youwillnotbelieve.typepad.com/ywnb_the_blog/star-wars-yoga/

I like TIE Fighter (advanced).

Okay, I just looked at the pictures.

Hometown Fail

2009-02-03T18:29:00.001-05:00

Hometown Fail
Originally uploaded by erink

Saw this today on the Hot Metal bridge. (It was after 2 p.m. so I had plenty of time stopped on the bridge to take a photo.)

Maybe it's just me, but I'm thinking that if you really want cred with the locals, you probably should spell the name of your town right.

There is another possibility, but I find it very unlikely that this plastic license plate frame was produced between 1892 and 1911.

I left half the license number on because it's a happy coincidence that it almost spells "hick."

If Yellowtail Sushi Fought Katsuo Sushi, Who Would Win?

2009-02-02T11:54:00.008-05:00

Came across this blog entry from a Japanese woman who got a fresh whole yellowtail from Hiketa fisheries. (The photo of Hiketa fish boxes is from this blog.)

It makes me hungry.

But when we were in Japan I was kind of disappointed in the yellowtail we got there. In the US, yellowtail sushi is always soft and buttery and delicately flavored. The yellowtail I had in Japan was often bland, and occasionally tough. Do we get better yellowtail here or was it just the wrong season?

Now, to be fair, we didn't always go to the best sushi places. Frequently it was just some restaurant we saw on the street. We did hit one really good place.

The best sushi fish I had in Japan was katsuo. Katsuo is cured and shaved into stinky flakes and used as a flavoring and soup base. (Apparently in English it's called skipjack, and the flakes are also called bonito but I don't know if that's Japanese or not.) I never had the fresh fish before, and it was awesome. A bit like tuna, but very savory and a little sweet. And good. It's dark red.

One thing that I thought was strange, in Japan it's not unusual to have tough bits in your fish. I came across many a tough membrane running through my nigiri fish, even in the good restaurant. Apparently that's not a dealbreaker. In the US that never happens. US sushi and sashimi is always soft and yields easily. (Ika, which is detailed below in the "stuff I don't like" section, is an exception.) Maybe because they think we're so easily grossed out by raw fish we just couldn't take it if it was difficult to eat.

I also made a point of trying things I didn't like in the US. See, I've never liked anago, saltwater eel, which shows up raw on nigiri sushi in a slimy sauce that resembles thickened formaldehyde. (Anago is very different from unagi, freshwater eel, which is served grilled and delicious even when done badly.) Then my beau had anago in Japan (in a very posh company cafeteria) and said it was pretty good. So I figured when I got to a good sushi place I had to order the stuff I avoid. The result:

ika (squid)
Much better than the US, but still kind of gross. Ika typically has a hard ridge along one side that makes it hard to eat, and the consistency is very gluey. The flavor is okay, not very big - but it's the texture that puts me off. In Japan it was less gluey and had a slightly better flavor.
ama-ebi (sweet shrimp)
Almost worth eating. These are tiny shrimp (like 1/2" long) that are marinated in a kind of sweet and sour sauce.
toro (tuna belly)
Now, I don't dislike toro, but I avoid it because it's considered "premium" and it's extra-expensive (the phrase "market price" gets used on menus), and I don't particularly like it. It's wasted on me. I like regular tuna for the meaty flavor, and toro has a fatty, buttery flavor that kind of turns me off. Usually it just tastes greasy. I'm certainly not against grease, but I think that greasy taste goes much better with pork flavor (bacon, pork chop) or a pot roast.

So I had toro twice in Japan and once I thought it was actually better than the regular tuna. (I also had some tuna that was not that great, but it wasn't the same place where I liked the toro.) I think the one toro I liked was meatier than usual. Also, in Japan there are two kinds of toro, chu-toro and o-toro, with chu- ("middle") being less fatty and less premium than o-. (Sometimes I think o- should be translated as "super-good".) So I didn't even try the o-toro.

I did not manage to get anago. So that's for another trip.

I hear that katsuo turns up occasionally around here. I hope it comes near me!

Best Fake Sudafed

2009-01-13T18:27:00.002-05:00

Target beats them all. 20 tablets of 12-hour (generic/Target brand) for under $5!

I used to swear by Rite Aid's fake sudafed. Or Eckerd when they existed. Same product, different house brand, about $6 if I remember right. But lately they've been having trouble getting them from their supplier and they're frequently out of stock. When you can only buy one pack per visit, availability is important.

Today I stopped by Walgreens. They just built one in my neighborhood - literally; they bought and demolished my friends' house to make room for their drive-through pharmacy. I'm not a big fan of the strobe light that flashes on the outside of their building all night, but otherwise it seems like an okay place. They had a decent stock of their house brand 12-hour, but it was $7.50! Also, instead of scanning my ID they had to type in some information, so it took a lot longer.

For the record, I tried the Sudafed brand 24-hour pills when they first came out. They just don't work. I don't know why, maybe it doesn't release the way it's supposed to. I haven't seen a generic 24-hour, maybe it doesn't work on them either.

But Target rules.

Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together

2009-01-05T22:03:00.009-05:00

Though I still have guilt about failing to blog more Japan stories, I have an out. The new Top Gear episode that just aired Monday on BBC America features a race across Japan. Jeremy Clarkson drives a souped up Nissan while James May and Richard Hammond take trains from Hakui (Ishikawa Prefecture) to Nokogiri mountain (Chiba Prefecture), south east of Tokyo.

On the way, they have several standard tourist experiences.

Yes, it is rude to talk on a cell phone on the train! A very strange concept for us. You also don't eat or drink on commuter trains or the subway (long-distance trains like the Shinkansen are different), though we saw several women doing makeup and other similar grooming tasks.
The manhole covers are awesome.

The trains stop precisely so that the doors are lined up with the lines on the platform. That's why people queue there to get into the train, but you can sort of stumble in after them if you weren't lined up.

There's no point in working out how to ask a question in Japanese if you aren't going to understand the answer. Hammond and May find this out while trying to buy snacks from a pushcart on the train. (Incidentally, we are big fans of that Toppo that Hammond chose. It's like pretzel Pocky - tiny pretzel rods filled with chocolate - but a little softer and better.) Their electronic translator asks how much it costs and the snack cart woman tells them it's 250 yen - at which point they realize they have no clue what she said. They're still near Hakui at the time, which is fairly remote, but in areas that get a lot of tourists most merchants use pocket calculators to show prices. Also people tend to assume that caucasians don't speak Japanese, which is sometimes helpful.

Clarkson joyfully crunches all manner of dried or fried sea life as snacks while driving. He eats little dried whole fish (we had some, mainly as bar snacks or garnish) and these tiny crabs (we didn't see these but they looked good). Hammond, on the other hand, has some issues with the food. There's a great line when he and May are in a convenience store trying to find snacks for the train:
Hammond: But it's all fish. I don't like fish.
May: Then you've come to the wrong country.

Since we didn't drive on our trip, we didn't get to experience a Japanese service station, though they did look impressive. It's great to see one in action in the video.

Here's a link to the episode description. There are also two videos from the segment that you can watch online.
http://www.topgear.com/us/the_show/more/season-11-ep-4-nissan-gt-r-vs-bullet-train/

Share and enjoy.

RoboOrange

2009-01-05T21:43:00.002-05:00

RoboOrange
Originally uploaded by erink

My orange has a barcode.

That never happened before.

Life in Pennsylvania

2009-01-02T11:35:00.004-05:00

You don't see this headline every day:

Police say buggy driver drunk in crash that killed horse

Apparently a 19-year old "man" was driving his horse and buggy, ran a stop sign, and hit a car. I feel bad for the horse, but it does seem like the driver deserved some penalty. And the horse probably could have been smarter about that, now that I think of it...though maybe it couldn't see the car. Or maybe the horse was drunk too. Now there's a picture.

Fractured French - Mise En Scene

2008-12-30T23:34:00.003-05:00

Fractured French - Mise En Scene
Originally uploaded by mthaeg

Another find from the scary-good Dinosaurs And Robots blog. This is a great photoset of vintage cocktail napkins on Flickr.

I like the French ones.

Peri Peri

2008-12-16T18:42:00.003-05:00

My new favorite song.

This is a keychain toy that mimics the sound and feeling of pulling the tab on a cardboard box or envelope.

The song has a lot of onomatopoeic words, which are particularly Japanese. For example, it rhymes "peri-peri," the name of the product (after the sound of opening a box tear strip) with "doki-doki" which is the canonical sound effect word for a pounding heart. In the Kansai airport on the way home I bought some cider soda that said "With KiraKira Sparkle" which was ironic because "kira-kira" is the canonical sound effect for sparkling (like light reflecting on water). Yes, they have a "sound effect" for something that's not a sound.

I found this video while Christmas shopping, but while in Japan I did buy the sibling product, Bandai Mugen Edamame, which is a rubbery soybean pod that you can pop the beans out of over and over again. You can find these wondrous things and many more at Strapya World, (http://www.strapya-world.com).

More and better Japan stories are in my brain for you, but I had to start on Christmas cleaning and such and I got distracted. That part might be getting under control now.

Not Japan, But Worthy of Note

2008-11-28T13:04:00.009-05:00

We interrupt my vacation stories to bring you two relatively unrelated items of news.

Muslim Scientist Leaves US Over Security Clearance

How often do you get to invoke Cartman's catch phrase to describe a serious news story? Basically this guy, a physicist and a naturalized US citizen, suddenly lost his security clearance and his job because the acting deputy energy secretary decided he was a security risk. The evidence was never presented and he never had a chance to refute it.

Here's the story:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08333/931314-82.stm

He has appeals pending, but he also has a new academic job in Egypt. Too bad "home" is probably actually Pittsburgh, where he's lived for 28 years (longer than he lived anywhere else).

Awesome Glass Sale Next Weekend

Riverside Design Group, which makes many awesome things, is having its annual warehouse sale. We went last year and bought many beautiful glass things (and some metal ones, I think). Some are seconds or discontinued, but lots of stuff is quite fine. The sale is a benefit for Persad Center, which is a counseling center specializing in queer issues (sexual orientation, gender expression, HIV disease). Some other artists are selling things too. The sale is at Riverside's studio in Lawrenceville. Details here: http://www.persadcenter.org/events3.htm

One hint, though; if you buy gifts at the sale you might want to re-wrap them if you don't want your mother wondering why the newspaper on her dishes is advertising mens' dating services. (Though she thought the photos were scenic.) (No, this was not my mother, who I think went to the sale too and would have known why.)

The Amazing Onigiri Wrapper Trick

2008-11-27T23:31:00.004-05:00

Onigiri (rice balls) are a staple convenience food in Japan. You can find them in all the convenience stores and they're relatively cheap ($1 to $1.50, depending on the filling). When I told my beau that we could eat out of the convenience stores for lunch he was thinking microwave burritos, but these are much better. Most shops have a pretty good selection of noodle bowls and ready-to-eat food; a lot of stores have actual cooked food too (hot tofu balls and korroke and those cakes with bean inside) though it didn't look that great....

When you can't read a lot of Japanese it's sometimes a gamble as to what's inside the rice ball, but we did okay.

The trick about prepackaged onigiri is that you want the nori (seaweed wrapper) to stay crisp. If you wrap it around the rice it absorbs moisture and gets gummy after an hour or so. (Personally I don't mind it gummy, but crisp is the ideal.) So they wrap the nori in its own layer of plastic wrap. When I was in Japan in 1995, only some companies packed the nori separately, and if they did you had to wrap it up yourself. But now there's this great packaging innovation that wraps up the rice automatically when you open it.

Here's how it works:

P.S. Ebi = shrimp.

On Slurping

2008-11-25T17:21:00.003-05:00

Udon Man
Originally uploaded by erink

Japanese slurp their noodles. On the trip we ate a lot of noodles (I think it's a stereotype that tourists eat nothing but udon, soba, and ramen - but they are good!) and I think I finally got the hang of it.

As a good American kid, I grew up eating spaghetti without slurping. At least in polite company. I also learned that if you did suck the spaghetti into your mouth the fun way, the end of the noodle whips around and spatters sauce on your shirt. So that fear of staining had also influenced my attempts to slurp in the past.

Turns out I was missing a key point. In Japan, all became clear. And here's why:

When Japanese serve things hot, they are really, really hot.

The tea is really, really hot; the soup is really, really hot; the bath is really, really hot.

You have to slurp the noodles to cool them down. Otherwise you'd be there for hours.

To cool the noodles, you have to slurp them with your mouth open. If you close your lips around them, your lips get burned.

This explains the sound, too. The sound is close to that aeration gurgle you use for wine tasting. It's a lot louder than that squeaky little slurp you'd get at the end of a spaghetti strand.

The other advantage of slurping with your mouth open is that the noodles don't spatter.

The disadvantage is that it's a little gross hanging your mouth over the bowl and shoveling stuff in, but if you control the amount of noodle you pick up you can pretty much get one mouthful in without a lot of back and forth. Though, in my experience, you will have to bite. Some noodles are very long.

So, that's my journeyman take on noodle slurping. I've probably got lots of things wrong still, so don't take this as the high authority on Japanese table manners.

I think more field work is necessary.

Following the Election from Afar

2008-11-20T10:08:00.006-05:00

We were out of the country during the presidential election, and time-shifted enough that we couldn't easily get the results as they happened. When we left on vacation Obama was definitely leading, but his winning wasn't something you could feel really confident about.

On the other hand, I was a little annoyed that before I left, _two_ of my relatives sent me that funny customized video about how I didn't vote and cost the democrats the election - when I was, in fact, the only member of my family who had already voted! But it was amusing, at least the first time.

McCain Makeru

So we woke up on - was it Wednesday? - in Japan and got on the internet at our hotel to find out what had happened. Obama won. Yay. We looked a bit at the state-by-state reports and news coverage, but we didn't get the speeches or anything. I even forgot to get a newspaper that day (I hear they were hot commodities elsewhere).

And then we got dressed and got food and went out to tour Tokyo.

But later that day, we were in a Japanese government building to use the free observation towers. A man stopped us in the lobby and asked the stereotypical Japanese-to-foreigner question "where from?" (though he was a bit more sophisticated and I think he actually asked what country we were from). We said America*, and he said something about Obama's win. I told him we were happy about that. He seemed happy too.

At this point I'll say that he didn't look like a government worker - not only was he not wearing a black suit and white shirt, he wasn't wearing a suit at all, I think he had a khaki green canvas blazer. And he had a slightly wild beard. Perhaps an academic.

And then he told us this story. In Japanese, McCain gets transliterated as ma-ke-in. There's another word in Japanese, makeru, which means, as he delicately put it, "to not win." So ma-ke-in, ma-ke-ru was a popular slogan in his circle during the campaign.

We actually saw him again that day, on a subway platform at rush hour, but we were on the train and couldn't say hi.

* Actually I would normally answer "United States," since that's more precise (Canada and Mexico and all those southern countries are in America too) but you have to say "America" in Japan because that's the word they expect.

America is Weird

2008-11-19T08:10:00.002-05:00

Back from 15 days vacation in Japan. One of the interesting things about foreign travel is how strange your home country looks when you get back. So before that fades completely, you get this post.

Americans are big. Really, really big. Fat, yes, but tall too.

And we're sloppy-looking. I was really struck by how few people tuck in their shirts here (hey, I never do myself). And we wear oversized shirts and sweatshirts, and unfashionably faded jeans. (Japan has a high population of thin men in black business suits and white shirts at all times, so they really bring the neatness factor up on average. The Japanese men in suits on the plane to San Francisco with us didn't take their jackets off the whole flight - though I saw that one of the younger ones had loosened his necktie. Slacker.)

We eat everywhere. And we eat really big sandwiches, with lots of meat on them. At the Chicago airport the beau and I ordered a "large" soda to share, and it was like a liter and a half of root beer in a giant plastic cup.

We have lots of different color hair. We have no cell phone charms. We drink really big coffees.

Welcome home.

Halloween Frights

2008-10-27T11:52:00.003-04:00

This is the scariest thing I've seen all week:

I mean, I knew she was running and all, but somehow it didn't really hit me until I saw it on the absentee ballot. They're actually letting her do it. That's ... messed up.

Sweet!

2008-10-18T22:00:00.000-04:00

Tokyo Game Show, October 2008. Whoah, he should turn around and roll up all those newspapers.

Photo by Lisa Katayama for Wired.com. More at Wired.com.

katamari.namco.com

Medieval Babes...Riiiight.

2008-10-16T09:00:00.006-04:00

Just found this ad in an old newspaper I was throwing out (gotta make sure I've read Savage Love before I put it in the recycle bin).

To this, I can only say.... "Amateurs."
http://www.flickr.com/search/?s=int&w=all&q=sca+cleavage&m=text

Oobleck?

2008-10-15T12:48:00.004-04:00

Apparently there's a commercial product that has similar qualities to oobleck, the classic geek toy made from a saturated cornstarch solution. (Or is it a suspension?)
Post-Gazette: Zoombang Protects Teen Athlete's Insulin Pump

The company says its product, "Zoombang" (wowie zowie), is a "viscoelastic, shear thickening" polymer. It even references its corn starch relative in the explanation.
Zoombang Protective Gear: What's Zoombang?

They make custom garments for athletes who need extra protection because of injuries or whatever. The Post-Gazette story was about a gadget they made for a youth football player who needed to protect his insulin pump. Apparently it's the viscoelastic part that makes it protective - standard oobleck is quite rigid under stress and wouldn't protect anything from impact.

Oobleck, I just learned by Googling, is named after some goo in a Dr. Seuss book. To make it, mix about one part water with 1.5 to 2 parts corn starch. It's said to be a "non-newtonian fluid" which means it has variable viscosity. Oobleck flows and behaves like a liquid under gentle pressure (it conforms to the shape of a cup and can be stirred slowly) but under more intense pressure it becomes rigid, like a solid. Quicksand is another example.

Oobleck also made an appearance on network TV recently. On Big Bang Theory, the guys had wrapped a stereo speaker in plastic wrap and set a puddle of oobleck on it. There are lots of videos of this on YouTube, but they use a steady tone instead of music like the TV show had. So turn your volume down.

There's lots more fun with non-newtonian fluids on YouTube (including a bunch of British science videos featuring Richard Hammond from Top Gear - who knew!), but this one is probably the best:

Unintentional Time Capsule Found in Lancashire, UK

2008-10-14T15:35:00.005-04:00

Wow. Just, wow.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7664661.stm

Apparently someone went to investigate an abandoned building and found a boarded-up corner shop with fixtures and some stock intact. There's at least one magazine from 1971, but the rest of the stuff could be from the 60s.

Here's another video where they poke at some of the stuff: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7664369.stm

From my new favorite blog, Dinosaurs and Robots. Which is unfortunately flooding my tiny little Google Reader box with multiple posts a day and crowding out my friends' blogs....

No Fun with Plastic

2008-10-11T01:36:00.002-04:00

No Fun with Plastic
Originally uploaded by erink

Somehow, of all the plastic bags wrapped around the new computer parts, this was the only one with such a graphic warning.

I think the one on the left means, "Do not use for autoerotic asphyxiation." At least if you're a lefty.

The one on the right seems to mean "No matter how funny you think it will be, do not put this on your baby." Well, duh. It will be much funnier on the cat.

The one in the middle means you can recycle it at the supermarket. Which is to say that you can stash it in your basement for ages and ages forgetting about it, then get really annoyed and throw it out when you move.

Enjoy!

Book Sale!

2008-10-09T13:06:00.004-04:00

One of my favorite publishers, Small Beer Press, is having a sale. http://lcrw.net/special.htm

Among their products are the excellent Carol Emshwiller books The Mount, Carmen Dog, and Report To The Men's Club and other stories. I also recommend Maureen McHugh's collection Mothers and Other Monsters and anything by Kelly Link. I've also heard good things about Laurie Marks' Elemental Logic series.

For the cheap, they also have some free content available for download.

Go forth and shop!

Look, Ma, No Bags!

2008-10-01T11:26:00.004-04:00

Ikea took the next step in eliminating plastic litter today when it stopped offering disposable bags at its checkouts. Wow.

They started the bag reduction program a year or so ago. They started selling more inexpensive reusable bags at the checkouts and charged five cents per disposable plastic bag. The disposable bag fee was donated to an environmental charity. They'd hoped to reduce disposable bag usage by 50% - but they got 92% fewer bags instead!

Actually, it's probably much easier for Ikea to go bag-free than it would be for other stores. Usually when I go to Ikea I buy at least one box or basket that I can pack the other things inside. And a lot of their furniture comes flat-packed in cardboard boxes that don't fit in bags anyway.

On the other hand, I hear Whole Foods is going this way too. Not sure if they will eliminate disposable bags, but I think they are going to start charging for them if they haven't already.

I've been pretty happy since I started using reusable grocery bags. It's just much less guilt in my life. I used to reuse grocery bags for trash, but now we use big kitchen bags, and even when I used them I always had a big backlog of once-used plastic bags accumulating in my kitchen or basement. It took some work to get used to bringing the bags into the store, but I seem to have got the hang of it. Also I have a tiny nylon bag that fits in my purse for emergency shopping. Yeah, it happens.

Still, I am a little nostalgic about the Ikea bags. I remember when the store first came to town, those big yellow bags were always associated with good things. Even when they changed to clear bags, they had good design. Even if they did change the cinnamon rolls and make them crappier (okay, I still buy them, but not every time - the old ones were much better). There are still a few Ikea bags floating around my house, as dust covers for off-season fans and in bags of fabric I haven't used yet. So they'll be with me for a while yet. Better there than in the ocean!

Best Seats in the House

2008-09-28T23:33:00.002-04:00

Scouts
Originally uploaded by erink

I got to one of the open practices in Penguins training camp a few weeks ago. It was cool, as usual. They let all of us proletariat sit in one section of seats, the East Igloo and above, which left the rest of the seating area open for official business. I saw TV guys doing interviews at C-16, and a bunch of guys in shorts who probably were the injured players camped out in B-27 for a while.

But during the scrimmage I noticed a crowd gathering near my "home" section, C-21. A few at the right could be players or trainers, but up in the mini-box, that's clearly Ed Johnston, super-scout. And all the guys around him are wearing suits and holding papers. Scouts?

Seems the professionals know where to watch their hockey. And so do I.

To Whom It May Concern...

2008-09-23T12:49:00.006-04:00

Dear World,

If I ever am kidnapped by a crazy scientist who wants to harvest my pituitary gland, and during the last-minute rescue I go into cardiac arrest, and the bad guy you were holding a gun on has run away anyway, please attempt standard CPR.

Please do not call your father (who, despite being a research scientist and not a physician and also despite having spent the last 30 years in a mental institution seems to be completely up-to-date in the theory of modern defibrillation techniques) on your cell phone and ask him to help you use random lab equipment and 120v A/C current to construct a field defibrillator out of an oscilloscope and a pile of phone books.

Standard chest compressions and rescue breathing would be fine. Thank you.

That is all.

Ikea Goes Green...

2008-09-16T17:03:00.005-04:00

Fancy Toilet
Originally uploaded by erink

...in the potty department.

My local Ikea recently remodeled, and expanded their first floor bathroom (which really needed it, because it's a long drive from Pittsburgh and those three tiny stalls weren't up to the job). Among other changes, they installed these "green" toilets. You're supposed to pull the handle up for "number one" and push it down for "number two" and it uses a different amount of water.

The handle is green - a green color, that is - because it's supposed to have some sort of anti-germ coating. So you should feel okay about touching it with your hand. Which I didn't (feel okay, that is). (I don't remember if I touched it with my hand or used the top of my foot.)

Here's a close-up of the documentation. I wonder who's got this on her resume.

Barnyard Cosmetology

2008-09-10T19:49:00.003-04:00

Forget the politics, it takes real guts to get to the truth about putting lipstick on a pig.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94481288

My Crummy Diet Vindicated!

2008-09-04T18:02:00.003-04:00

I don't eat the best diet in the world. Too much fat, too much sugar, and not enough vegetables. But this week I got some unexpected good news.

I read Nutrition Action Healthletter, which is the monthly publication from Center for Science in the Public Interest. They've got publicity in the past for "exposing" restaurant foods that have way more calories than anyone would have guessed.

The September issue's cover story is about diabetes. It talks about obesity and inactivity, which are the most important factors that predict who will get type 2 diabetes, but it also talks about a lot of other dietary factors that seem to relate. For instance, refined sugar seems to increase the risk, and vitamin D seems to decrease the risk.

Now we get to the good part. Coffee reduces risk of diabetes. Even decaf.

In one study of 88,000 nurses, the risk of diabetes was 13 percent lower for those who drank one cup a day, 42 percent lower for those who drank two to three cups a day, and 47 percent lower for those who drank at least four cups a day than for those who drank none. Tea didn't raise or lower risk.

They think that it might be because the ridiculous amount of antioxidants in coffee protects the pancreas from damage. According to the article, coffee has more antioxidants than anything. Even broccoli.

What else is good for you? Alcohol. Drinking "in moderation" (two to four drinks per week for men) was linked to a 25% lower risk of diabetes. The risk kept going down with more drinks, up to seven (43% lower!). Though I can't imagine drinking that much would be good for your liver. And they said you're not supposed to start drinking to fix your health, because "alcohol has other risks."

But here's the best bit of all. Peanut butter. See, trans fats (vegetable oil with some of the bonds filled with hydrogen to make them more like saturated fats) raise the risk of diabetes, possibly because they increase inflammation or because they tend to lead to belly fat. Polyunsaturated fats reduce inflammation, and they might alter cell membranes and reduce insulin resistance.

Polyunsaturated fats may help explain why women who reported eating nuts or peanut butter at least five times a week had a 20 to 30 percent lower risk of diabetes than those who almost never ate those foods.

Yay! I eat peanut butter at least three times a week.... I win!

How Can You Not Make Fun Of That?

2008-08-25T13:40:00.007-04:00

West Virginia is my home state's much-maligned neighbor to the south.

Perhaps it's the isolation of the Appalachian mountains, the coal mining traditions, and now the post-industrial poverty that gives West Virginia its bad reputation. But for whatever reason, West Virginia is known as a land where duct tape is suitable for repairing cars; a lawn chair, six-pack, and wading pool is how you spent your summer vacation; and to figure out how many dogs or children you have you have to look under the porch. A land where Monongalia County was named by a governor who couldn't spell Monongahela.

It is quite beautiful, actually. A lot of my outdoorsy friends spend their weekends driving out there to climb or bike around on their mountains and frolic in the woods. They even have Bridge Day, where they close the bridge over the huge New River Gorge to let people base jump off it. And at some point in American history, West Virginia was progressive enough to forbid slavery, which is why we have a West Virginia and a Virginia in the first place.

But I digress. The reason for this post was this article in the Post-Gazette today: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08238/906798-455.stm. Turns out, Weirton, WV, has a problem with feral chickens. Feral chickens.

Feral chickens. And they seem to live on Wall Street.

Now, how can you not make fun of that?

(Photo above copyright 2008 Bob Donaldson/Post-Gazette)

Olympic Fencing Brush with Fame

2008-08-14T14:11:00.003-04:00

At about the last national fencing competition I went to, I was chatting with some folks in the over-40 division. I had pretty much realized it wasn't worth traveling to national tournaments any more since I could only ever enter one event. And I wasn't all that good at that event either. So it's lots of trouble and expense for a half day of fencing. But I was 38 or 39 at the time, and I realized that once I was over 40, I could enter the masters category events too.

But before I could make it over 40, I lost interest in local competitions and pretty much chucked the fencing thing. But I do plan to get back to it, still.

One of the people I was watching fence in the over-40s foil was a Canadian woman. There were a lot of reasons she caught my eye. First, she was a pretty kickass fencer, and I wondered why she was in the masters competition instead of one of the open divisions. (She might have been entered in multiple divisions.) Also, she had a Chinese accent but her jacket said she was Canadian. And she was pretty: long black hair, graceful and powerful looking. She made a nice contrast to the slightly nerdy older guy who was chatting me up trying to talk me into how cool the over-40 division was.

Earlier this week, I checked out the Olympics for the first time and found out the women's Foil competition was live online. So I go to the website, watch some video, and cruise through the earlier results, and there's a familiar name. Luan. Who is this woman I saw at the tournament years ago. She's 50 now, and on the Canadian team. She made it through the first round of eliminations in the women's foil competition, which is not too shabby.

Turns out Luan Jujie won China's first and only fencing gold medal in 1984. When I saw her she was probably getting back into shape to make the Canadian team.

There's even a human-interest article on the NBC website about her. (OMG! She's old! And female! And she fences! And she used to be a Communist!)

So I guess over-40 fencing might not be so bad after all.

Just for Fun...

2008-07-29T14:34:00.004-04:00

Well, I had some deep topics I wanted to blog about, but apparently I've lost all ability to focus. I'm thinking it's a combination of the heat and brain atrophy from watching 5 hours of the Tour de France every day for three weeks.

So instead, I bring you this:

Two-legged dogs!

Actually there are two interesting things to learn from these videos. First, dogs really don't seem to care much when they lose limbs. They just get up and get about their business. Second, the biomechanics are pretty cool; they use their core muscles to adjust their balance and it's pretty interesting to watch.

So. Better content later, I hope.

Hey, I Paid for That!

2008-07-22T10:52:00.004-04:00

In case you were wondering, this is what shows up in your dryer filter if you pre-wash and dry 10 yards of white linen all together.

If I were crafty, I could make a really small quilt. (Maybe Barbie-sized.)

Whoah, I'm blogging about lint. Have I really sunk so low?

Reduce, Reuse, Re-read

2008-07-09T10:27:00.001-04:00

Reduce, Reuse, Re-read
Originally uploaded by erink

At a garden center near Pittsburgh.

In related news....

2008-07-04T12:46:00.005-04:00

This appeared on the home page of my local newspaper this afternoon.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

More Evidence that Hockey Players are Not Normal

2008-06-03T16:42:00.003-04:00

Hell of a game last night. This morning.

Actually, it was more like two games, since it took six periods to finish.

The Penguins can definitely play with the Red Wings, but they keep forgetting that. In game four, they came out flying and kicked butt - including a breathtaking penalty kill where every time Detroit brought the puck across the blue line they lost posession within three seconds. Then the Pens gave up a goal - and it really was just a lucky shot, not an especially great play - and their whole outlook changed. They couldn't pass, they couldn't set up an attack, and every time a Detroit player skated near them they lost the puck.

I'm particularly happy that Maxime Talbot got the game-tying goal. He's one of the guys who is least susceptible to this performance funk. He always plays hard and never gives up. It's one thing to say that, but it's another thing to watch him behind the net in what everybody thinks is the last minute of their season, chopping at the loose puck - not once, not twice. Three times. And the third time, it goes in.

I came across this bit in the Post-Gazette story about the game. As I said before, hockey players are not like other people.

The power play that led to his goal was made possible when Detroit forward Jiri Hudler smacked Penguins defenseman Rob Scuderi in the face with his stick and received a double-minor.

"I was just praying for blood," Scuderi said.

He got his wish, and a nice scab on his chin. It matches the one on his upper lip where he got hit by a teammate in game two. And what did he say then? "It's unfortunate that it wasn't [Detroit], because it would have been four minutes."

Stoicism is pretty much a requirement in the NHL, but the playoffs do bring out remarkable feats of pain tolerance. Sergei Gonchar helped set up the Pens' winning goal. Gonchar crashed hard, head-first, into the boards at the end of the second period and left the game at the beginning of the third. But by the start of the third overtime, he said, he was feeling better. So he suited back up and thought maybe he'd try taking a shift if they got a power play (he had the most power play goals of any defenseman this season).

So Wednesday night we get our last home game of the season, win or lose. I can't complain. Hell of a season.

Though the cup would sure be nice.

Venture Bros is Back! Yaaaaaay!!!!

2008-06-02T12:00:00.010-04:00

I happened to be up late enough last night to catch the first new episode in a year and a half when it aired. It was pretty sweet, despite the near total lack of Brock.

The "murderous moppets" did unleash some Brockworthy kickass moves on the Monarch henchmen to assert their dominance. That was fun.

This episode was all Monarch/Dr. Girlfriend. They even redid the opening credits to be all Monarch instead of the Ventures. You do get to see some of the other characters, but they don't speak. Except for Helper.

Excellent line: "I am not interested in doing a theme based on my voice!"

Which leads into this little scene:

Watch (guild henchman): Then let's work on a mutation. The Ocelot Woman! Basically, a mutated ocelot. We let it bite you and bang: ocelot powers!

Guild Henchman 2: They are fierce and super-territorial. Form-fitting costume with ears and a tail that, uh, grabs ... things.

Lady Au Pair: Uhh, no.

Watch: Okay. [Opens door number two.] Mink DeLovely. Take a quick dip in a vat of boiling minks. They have been skinned, pureed, and belted with gamma rays.

GH2: Verrrry sexy costume with this option.

LAP: I was thinking of something that plays off my abilities more than my sexuality.

Watch: Say no more. You want to number two for a woman. [To GH2: ] The feminist type. Done!

GH2: [The den of ?] murderous Betty Rage!

And also this:

Phantom Limb: Shadowman Nine!

Shadowman 9 (secretly the Monarch): Quit shoving! What? Oh, am I 9? [Looks down at number on uniform.] I thought I was Shadowguy 6.

And there are t-shirts! For every episode they're releasing a limited-edition t-shirt based on the episode; you can order it for one week only. This pushes my buttons on so many levels ... and the first shirt is one I've wanted ever since I first saw the Guild logo (was it in Fallen Arches or earlier?). So of course my order is in already.

You can get yours here. Dude.

Revenge of the Orange Crush

2008-05-18T19:42:00.004-04:00

Pittsburgh 6, Philadelphia 0
Next up, the Stanley Cup!

Revenge of the Orange Crush
Originally uploaded by erink

Maybe the bible really does have all the answers...

2008-05-16T10:24:00.002-04:00

I found this very modern bit of reassurance at the end of an e-mail announcing the birth of my cousin's daughter:

Psalm 139:13-14

13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
No virus found in this outgoing message.
...

Adventures in Good Writing

2008-05-07T13:32:00.002-04:00

The TV was tuned to Cartoon Network when I turned it on this afternoon, and I heard this line on the Mr. Men show:

"Hello, Miss Calamity. Exciting news. You are the grand prize winner in the Dillydale sweepstakes. You win a collection of extremely breakable glass animals."

Sweet.

Kasparaitis Tough

2008-05-01T20:57:00.005-04:00

I figure I should get around to posting something about the hockey playoffs. It's kind of a big deal in my life, I've been scheduling around the games for weeks, and watching them has been pretty exciting.

But I hadn't been inspired yet. I mean, there was the miracle of the pretzel in Game 1 versus the Rangers, but you kind of had to be there.

And things have been going so well, you don't want to jinx it. (See, as soon as I finished that sentence the Rangers scored and went up 2-0 in game 4. I might have to finish this later....)

Things changed today when I learned that two of our players turned up this morning wearing boot casts from blocking shots with their feet on Tuesday.

Which put me in mind of the 2001 playoffs.

It was game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals, and the Pens were battling the New Jersey Devils to get to the Stanley Cup round. Darius Kasparaitis, who hits harder than anyone I've ever seen play hockey, blocked a shot with his foot in the first period. It hurt, so he went to the locker room. The doctor told him he had broken bones in his foot. And he put the skate back on and went out and played the rest of the game.

I can't find this version on the InterWeb anywhere, but I distinctly remember Kasparaitis telling the story this way:

I took off my skate, and it started to swell up. I didn't want to leave the team with five guys [on defense], so I put the skate back on.

In the versions I can find, he talks about how the skate is like a cast, and skating keeps the swelling down. He didn't rule out playing the next game until after the morning skate that day. It was even reported that he skated at practice that day, though I'm not sure how since there are quotes from his teammate Jaromir Jagr about how his foot was too big for a human-sized skate.

But maybe he was riding a high streak. A few days earlier, he'd scored a goal - a very rare event for him. And it was a game-winning goal. In overtime. In game seven. Against Dominik Hasek.

I still have that goal saved on my old TiVo.

Found this quote from him.

If I can get the boot on, I will play. A normal person couldn't do it, but hockey players are not normal.

Thanks, Darius.

Vintage Kaspar:
http://www.dariuskasparaitis.com/articles/art74.html
http://www.dariuskasparaitis.com/articles/art120.html
http://www.dariuskasparaitis.com/articles/art79.html
Post-Gazette: Kasparaitis will attempt to play in Game 3 despite broken toes
Modern Kaspar - do you read Russian?:
http://darius-kasper.livejournal.com/

Tougher Dog Laws

2008-04-29T19:47:00.003-04:00

Tougher Dog Laws

Found this on a memory card I swapped out at Christmas time and never unloaded until today. This was the (front page of the) newspaper we found in the coffee shop on the way home from visiting my pseudo-in-laws.

The wiener dog photo is completely unrelated to the "tougher dog laws" story. Somebody at the Oil City Derrick was having a fun time working on the holiday.

Advice from Writers

2008-04-25T12:47:00.002-04:00

I'm not a writer, but I do occasionally associate with them. They're always getting asked for advice. This week Neil Gaiman posted this great story on his blog about the best advice he ever got from another writer:

In the shower today I tried to think about the best advice I'd ever been given by another writer. There was something that someone said at my first Milford, about using style as a covering, but sooner or later you would have to walk naked down the street, that was useful...

And then I remembered. It was Harlan Ellison about a decade ago.

He said, "Hey. Gaiman. What's with the stubble? Every time I see you, you're stubbly. What is it? Some kind of English fashion statement?"

"Not really."

"Well? Don't they have razors in England for Chrissakes?"

"If you must know, I don't like shaving because I have a really tough beard and sensitive skin. So by the time I've finished shaving I've usually scraped my face a bit. So I do it as little as possible."

"Oh." He paused. "I've got that too. What you do is, you rub your stubble with hair conditioner. Leave it a couple of minutes, then wash it off. Then shave normally. Makes it really easy to shave. No scraping."

I tried it. It works like a charm. Best advice from a writer I've ever received.

Advances in Toaster UI

2008-04-20T18:54:00.004-04:00

Dream Toaster
Originally uploaded by erink

Came across this toaster in a shop window. It has the functions you actually want when making toast: "Lift and Look" and "A little More" are groundbreaking.

Well at least they're pretty darn cool.

One problem, the shop was Williams Sonoma and the toaster is ridiculously expensive.

But it sure is pretty.

Pretty Important

2008-04-14T12:30:00.002-04:00

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

-- Martin Luther King Jr.

Todays' random quotation on my Google homepage.

Yes, I am avoiding finishing my taxes, why do you ask?

Missing the Point

2008-04-10T14:38:00.006-04:00

When making a recent ThinkGeek order, I noticed they had these OpenX package opening gadgets for pretty cheap (like $2 or $3) so I got one. It's for opening those horrible plastic clamshell packages that won't tear and then cut the shit out of your hands when you do get them halfway open.

So I was pretty surprised when I got the gadget and it was packaged in one of those horrible plastic fused clamshells. What were they thinking?

I would like a bit more of an apology - instead they're actually kind of smug:

Oh well. If I ever get it open I'll let you know how it works.

The ThinkGeek order, by the way, was inspired by their April 1 newsletter, which is always awesome. Check out this year's version at http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/looflirpa/2008.shtml

Magically Delicious

2008-04-08T10:16:00.002-04:00

My parents didn't let me have crap cereals. We would beg and beg, but no go.

Mom did let us pick out cereal at the grocery store but there was some rule that we had to find ones that didn't have sugar as the first ingredient. (Although, looking back, I can't believe those existed, so it must have been sugar as the first or second ingredient.) Sucrose and corn syrup and all that stuff count as sugar too, of course. Somehow, King Vitamin and Frosted Flakes passed, but no Frankenberry or Fruit Loops or Coco Puffs.

That last bit might have had something to do with the fact that my dad liked Frosted Flakes....

So I had to learn about sugar cereals in college. The dining center had these huge bins of breakfast cereal available at every meal. (I remember a bet at my table once that you couldn't distinguish different colored Fruit Loops by flavor.) That was how I discovered Lucky Charms.

I really like Lucky Charms. They're oaty and sweet. Not too sweet. And they have two flavors that you alternate back and forth: oaty cereal and sweet marshmallows.

In college I learned the marshmallow trick. I never liked Lucky Charms much because the dehydrated marshmallows were chalky and squeaked on my teeth. In college I discovered that if you made sure to get the marshmallows all wet right away, they soften up and don't scrape your teeth so much.

The marshmallow shapes have got totally out of hand, though. When I was a kid they had "pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, and green clovers." Then in a media blitz they introduced a new marshmallow: blue diamonds. Soon it was "pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, green clovers, blue diamonds, and purple horseshoes!" Then they realized they could do "special editions" with different marshmallows. Now the marshmallows are all multicolored (new technology from a few years ago), and much bigger than the originals. Of course, Wikipedia has an exhaustive article on Lucky Charms' "marbits" through history....

As an adult, I buy Lucky Charms every few months. Whenever I open the cereal cabinet not knowing what I want, I see it and get all enthusiastic about having Lucky Charms. I don't know why. But you have to go for those small moments of joy.

There is one thing I never understood. The oat cereal pieces are shaped exactly like dry cat food. Does General Mills make cat kibble too?

Creepy Products I Have Known

2008-03-31T12:36:00.009-04:00

Better Than Ears

I found these at a grocery store years ago. They're supposed to replace the boiled pig ears that you can buy in huge bags to feed your dogs (which are another creepy product themselves). Which is worse, ears or pseudo-ears?

But you get 50% more free!

Wee Block

I'd heard of these when I was with two new moms who were talking about baby products you shouldn't buy because they were stupid. This is a cup-shaped sponge you put over your baby boy's weenie while changing him so he can't squirt urine very far when the diaper is off. I'd never seen one for real so when I was shopping at a local baby superstore (site of a relative's shower registry) I sought this one out.

The other one I heard of had a better name: "the pee-pee teepee"

But the "tinkle tinkle lil' star" embroidery is a creepy touch....

Resurrection Eggs

This was in the Easter section of the Mississippi Sprawl-Mart where we went to buy camping supplies. (I held out on buying stuff there as long as possible, but when you're stranded in the south and on a time budget it's difficult....)

These are plastic eggs with mysterious symbols inside that somehow are supposed to teach the story of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection.

Yeah, we're really supposed to believe that this kid is happy to find a bloody crown of thorns in that egg instead of a chocolate?

Over 1 million sold!

Oops! Disposable Panties

Almost forgot the creepiest one: emergency panties.

"Ideal for camping and travelling[sic]!" it says. (Actually, I've seen normal undies at way less than $2/each, and since this two-pack cost $3.99, I think the cotton still wins out.)

"Keep a pack handy for those Heavy Flow days!"

It could have been worse - I found these in a hotel gift shop (where I suppose I was buying "emergency" hosiery, since I was getting a foot blister and the drugstore was several more blocks away), not in a nightclub toilet or highway rest area.

They're ingeniously packed into a compressed disc about 2" diameter and less than an inch high. And the sizing? "Free size," it says. But not so free as you could be.

Statistically Improbably Phrases

2008-03-03T21:34:00.005-05:00

My best one for this week:

"That's a cross-check, you piece of poo."

According to Amazon.com, "Statistically Improbable Phrases" are phrases that occur in the text of one book but not very frequently in other books. The phrases don't have to be rare in that particular book, just in books in general.

Which kind of makes sense, because I'm pretty sure I've said something close to that before. But hey, it was a 3 p.m. game. You have to tone it down.

P.S. Here's everything you need to know about hockey penalties

Classy Leftovers

2008-02-21T15:50:00.003-05:00

My dinner from a couple weeks ago - all out of the fridge and reheated in about 10 minutes prep time. My beau started the Japanese cooking experiment a few weeks back, and it's getting pretty good.

Clockwise, we have: plain rice; a miso-based soup with mushrooms, tofu, and fresh watercress; and pickled cabbage (two colors). The green stuff sticking out of the pickles is kombu. (And it's probably been used three times before it went into the pickles, because kombu gets recycled a lot in this cuisine.)

The inspiration was the book Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen by Elizabeth Andoh. A friend gave it to us for Christmas last year. So the beau finally cracked it open, studied up, made lists, and we headed out for ingredients.

It turns out, Japanese home cooking is pretty complicated. The food is simple, but you have to make all these broths and such from scratch. There were some misfires in the beginning - I think he accidentally skipped a step where you leave the broth overnight and then take half the ingredients out before adding the soup ingredients - but even the mistakes weren't too bad.

We did get props from the clerk at the local Japanese food store. She saw the dried anchovies, asian mushrooms, and fresh yuzu (which were like $7! are they ever in season?) and said "what are you making?" We explained we were learning to cook Japanese food. As she rang up the large bag of flaked bonito, she said "This is good. The young people don't use this any more, they just use the powdered dashi."

I have to say, after seeing how long it took to make dashi from scratch (not to mention smelling that bag of bonito when it was opened), I can understand that!

And I finally tried umeboshi, which is one of those Japanese foods that foreigners aren't expected to like. Ume are a small fruit that's like a plum. They're pickled in salt. So the result is salty and sour and pretty intense. Here's how it went:

Umeboshi 1: Uh, eeew. Ack. Whoah. But the saltyness is kind of nice with my head cold.

Umeboshi 2 (days later): That's not as salty as I remember.

Umeboshi 3: Mmm, umeboshi!

Knee Update

2008-02-04T22:59:00.000-05:00

Greetings from week 11.

Turns out I did get to walk at my four-week appointment, but it was seven days before Christmas when that happened and I was just too busy to blog about it.

Or take pictures. These are from week 9, and it's been looking pretty normal as far as musculature goes. I should have got some pictures at four or five weeks when the thigh was all skinny and caved in on the sides. I stepped on the scale at some point and I had lost about six pounds. I am pretty sure I didn't have a huge fat loss by lying on my couch for five weeks eating peanut butter sandwiches and Chef Boyardee ravioli for five weeks!

So, back on December 18 I went to see my doctor. My surgeon, who is known even among surgeons for being brusque, breezed into the room with his fellows and put me through the paces: Show me your quad set, show me your heel slide, show me a straight leg raise. I guess I did everything right, because he basically pronounced me healed. He said to stop using the brace completely, go to 100% weight bearing, and use the crutches for another week or so. And I could bend my knee as far as I wanted.

It was actually pretty weird, because I walked in to the doctor visit feeling all disabled, trying not to put any significant weight on my leg and worrying about overflexing my knee and busting out the stitches - and then an hour later I was supposed to walk out not worrying about that stuff? I sat in the room for a little while thinking about that and then decided to put the brace back on to walk out. After all, it would be troublesome to carry it. And I ended up wearing it for a few more hours, because I wanted to go out to Ikea and I only had one stocking on, and that would just have been weird without the brace for context.

The MD also said the next two months would be when I did my most intense physical therapy. Too bad my insurance only covers 15 visits per calendar year! On the bright side, I got to go two or three times a week in December. But I've been doing pretty well with once a week in the PT gym and lots of homework. It takes about an hour to get through all my home exercises, and I do that twice a day (occasionally feeling guilty because I'm not doing three sets a day). It's pretty annoying that it takes me an extra hour now to get out of the house after I get up.

So, a lot of things work now. Going up stairs is okay; going down stairs is a little harder but not too bad. I can walk almost as much as I want - a few weeks ago my knee started aching after walking in the park for 45 minutes, but I haven't tried anything like that since.

Still forbidden: running, jumping, mountain biking, falling, and any activity that could result in an unplanned descent. Road biking in a controlled environment I could probably do, but I haven't tried it yet. I might try climbing on a top-rope too, if I get a sports jones before the weather gets nice.

Oh, and limping, limping has always been forbidden. Apparently it's hard to retrain a limp, so they really want you to walk normally. Which I still don't do 100%, but I try hard!

So now I'm just impatient. I feel okay, but I have to keep doing PT. I have to do all these boring exercise but I'm not allowed to do fun sports. Sucks. But I have to be good if I want to play outside this summer....

I hate cats...

2008-01-28T01:03:00.001-05:00

But this, I like.

The Return of the King

2008-01-24T22:10:00.000-05:00

King amazed the world when on November 2nd, seven days after awaking from a 30-year coma, he showed up to vote in the 2000 presidential election. He was turned away due to voting irregularities.
- The Boondocks

I'm rewatching the Boondocks animated show episode The Return of the King. They seem to play it every year around the King holiday. It's f'king brilliant.

In the episode, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was injured in the 1968 assassination attempt, but survives to wake up from a coma in 2000. Despite his discomfort with modern "urban" culture, everything goes moderately well for him - until September 2001, when he says on a talk show that we should love our enemies and turn the other cheek. Shunned as unAmerican, he ends up staying with the Freeman family, where Huey encourages him to restart his activist career.

Partly it's cutting social commentary, and partly it's funny to hear King say things like "I'm staying at a Holiday Inn Express. I feel smarter already."

How I spent my Winter Vacation

2008-01-02T20:21:00.001-05:00

Winter Classic post-game revelry Originally uploaded by erink

Or, outdoor hockey is a really good reason to visit Buffalo in January.

The game was great. It was hard to follow the action (we could hardly hear the announcements and the video screen was on the opposite side from the rink for us), but I'll get to watch it on my TiVo later. It wasn't too cold, but I was getting a bit wet by the end - somehow, it only stopped snowing during the period breaks. The snow was pretty. Score-wise, it couldn't have gone better - Crosby wins in the last round of a shootout? Unbelievable.

We sat in a section that was mostly Penguins fans - I used our season ticket holder code when I ordered them, so I expected that. But the guy next to me was a Sabres fan, and he was a real jewel - kept saying the players should break more guys' legs and threatening to "come up there and fuck up" the guy behind him when he heckled back. He quieted down after a while - apparently he had snuck in beer in in his pants but he somehow lost all but one can on the way in.

The "title sponsor" was this Amp energy drink (which I don't think I'd ever heard of before - but after a poor experience with guarana in the 90s I haven't really followed the energy drink market). But we saw an Amp Energy Airstream trailer on the highway home, which gains style points in my book, and they played this awesome ad on the stadium screen a few times:

The Sabres goalie is Ryan Miller, who's played very well (but lost) both times we've matched up this season. Judging by fan jerseys, he's pretty popular. The Kings man is former Pens goalie J-S Aubin, nice to see him again.

Another moment at the game was when a Pens fan was coming back to his seat. He yelled to his buddy from the aisle: "I went looking for Superbowl trophies and I couldn't find any!"

Back to the arena on Saturday (we sold our tickets for the 3rd). It won't be the same, but my toes will be warmer!

Waterfront Views...

2007-12-14T12:48:00.001-05:00

Pittsburgh has the reputation of being stodgy, but actually it's changing all the time. Like today. Where we once had a road, now we have a pretty little canal.

The Tenth Street Bypass by Lake Fong

This is the Tenth Street Bypass, which parallels the - uh, Allegheny? river (a true Pittsburgher never knows the names of any streets, why should rivers be any different). The baseball park is just across the real river, which is on the right in the photo.

This street is low. And sometimes when it's wet, it floods. It's got these nice walls on either side, and that dip at the bottom. They call it the "bathtub".

You don't think a lot about floods when you live here, although we had a few really destructive ones about three years back. Most of the housing is not along the riverside, because that was used for industry, and people generally lived up the hills a bit. But every few weeks when there's a heavy rain, you'll hear on the traffic reports that the Mon Wharf is closed to parking. That's because the Mon Wharf is a little parking lot that is basically on the riverbank. The river goes up a few feet, it floods. No big deal. People usually move their cars if there's an unexpected storm. Not always. The first time I ever parked there, there was sludge and puddles on the pavement, and it was only after I got back that I put the two things together. (But I felt pretty safe, because my office building at the time looked out onto that river. I always thought that company should rig webcams for the people who worked across town.)

I also remember a strange incident when I was a child. My family was parking downtown, in a parking garage. Dad drove down a ramp, and at the other end, there was a lake. He acted like it wasn't a big deal, which was kind of confusing at the time, but was probably exactly how I would act today. You just turn the car around. We decided to park on a higher floor.

At any rate, back to today's flood. I almost never drive on this road, because it only connects downtown to the highways to the south suburbs. It's not for my people. But it is scenic, at times.

Online Shopping - A View from 40 Years Ago

2007-12-08T16:28:00.000-05:00

Sweet. How do I get that "counterpart console" where the husband pays for the things I pick out?

Some more info about this video is on Snopes at http://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/year1999.asp

Six More Weeks of Winter

2007-11-29T17:31:00.000-05:00

Tuesday morning I went to my follow-up doctor visit. They took out some stitches and took x-rays and re-fitted my brace. I get to bend my knee now! I get to shower, and I get to take off my brace to do exercises and to sleep.

The only down side is I still can't put weight on my left leg - and that won't change until I see the MD in three weeks! Ack!

The really big problem with only having one leg that is I can't carry anything, except in a bag or a backpack. A cup of coffee and bowl of cereal don't fit in a bag or backpack. Making food is like doing ballet, because I can only move food as far as I can reach by leaning. If my beau's not home, I only get to eat in the kitchen. No coffee at the computer. No dinner in front of the TV. Luckily, my kitchen workspace is relatively cramped: about three feet between the fridge and the sink/island/breakfast bar, and four or five between the stove/microwave/toaster counter and the island.

So making the morning coffee goes something like this:

Hobble over to the coffeemaker and set the crutches down carefully so they won't slide onto the floor.

Lean over to the sink across the way to get the coffeepot out of the draining rack.

Grind coffee and put it in the filter. Set the pot in the coffeemaker.

Lean over to the sink counter to get the Brita pitcher.

Pour in water and push the button to make coffee.

Get a coffee cup out of the cabinet. (This is the part where I'm really happy I decided to store the coffee cups all in the tiny cabinet over the coffeemaker.) Pour coffee.

Lean over to the sink counter again and set the coffee down as far to the middle as possible.

Pick up crutches. Hobble around to the other side of the counter where the barstools are.

Stretch over the counter and get the coffee from the other side. Sit and drink and rest.

Apparently the big deal is the meniscus repair. Ten years ago I didn't have anything done to my meniscus, so I was able to start walking a bit the second week. The P.A. I saw Tuesday said I could put up to 30 pounds on my leg. I measured 30 lbs with my bathroom scale and it's nothing. I didn't mention to her the two times I slipped and weighted my foot a little by accident (both Saturday, once at the hockey game and once on the way home). Hopefully nothing bad came of it...

Also I can't drive, because I can't step on a clutch, and we don't have any cars without a clutch! (Actually, I don't have a fit car at all just now, but that's another story....) But I can't push a grocery cart or carry anything either once I get somewhere, so it's just as well! Hello Amazon Christmas shopping!

PT at the gym starts next week!

*NIX humor

2007-11-25T16:42:00.001-05:00

In honor of my temporary return to my former employer, which makes Linux things.

Really, it's funny. Trust me.

Once more into the breach

2007-11-21T19:23:00.001-05:00

Before and after photos of my latest project:

11/18/2007

11/20/2007

The after photo looks a little more gruesome than it is; there is a discernable kneecap under there, just the photo doesn't show it very well because it's on the inside.

Yes, I jacked up my knee playing Ultimate again. This is the other knee, I jacked up my right knee playing Ultimate ten years ago and got it fixed, then played for ten years until this July. Ironically, my mantra for Summer League this year was "it'll grow back." Twisted ankle? Wonky hamstring? It'll grow back, probably before our next game. Well, as it turns out, not everything grows back.

This injury was much more glorious than the last time. This time, I was open in the end zone, and trying to catch a long throw that was coming down at a weird angle. My defender was back at mid field, and one of her teammates peeled off his man to cover me. We both went up for the disc, and we knocked together. And then I screamed like a soprano (this part was not very glorious) and my knee hurt a lot for a minute, and then it didn't hurt any more. I only wish I had caught the disc and scored.

I was a spectator for the last few Summer League games, and limped through Pennsic a week later, but felt pretty good by the end of the week. Then for the next three months, things pretty much stayed the same. I was doing PT exercises every day and I could walk as much as I wanted, but I had trouble going down stairs (or stepping off a bus) and although I got some rail-trail bike riding in, I couldn't do any other sports. My knee was sore every day.

The doctors diagnosed a completely torn ACL and a tear in the meniscal cartilage. I think it might be the miniscal tear that gave me so much trouble - when I messed up my other knee, I didn't do much damage to the meniscus, and I remember my knee being pretty normal after the first few weeks. Not this time.

I was interested to see if the surgical technology had changed in 10 years. Turns out, it hasn't changed very noticeably. I'm sure it's progressed, but the major outline is the same.

There are three main options for replacement ACLs: patellar tendon, hamstring tendon, and cadaver graft (more euphemistically called an allograft). When my first friend had an ACL repair (in the late 80s or early 90s), he had a hamstring tendon, which was the new thing at the time and they thought it would replace patellar tendon. Well, it didn't, and they still use all three. My surgeon said they all have benefits and drawbacks. The patellar tendon leaves a bigger scar (which is almost a benefit to me, since I think I should have something to show for my trouble) and has the risk of persistent front-knee pain. The allograft has a slight risk of disease transmission, but recovery is faster (no graft site to rehab) and they get to choose a graft instead of having to use whatever they find in your leg.

When I had my right knee done in the late 90s, they used a hamstring tendon. It worked pretty well, but the graft site was very painful and to this day, that hamstring muscle is weaker than it should be (it's noticeably weaker than the other, and it occasionally cramps under stress). My surgeon was inclined to use the hamstring again, because it had worked well in my right knee, but I easily talked him into an allograft. An Ultimate player friend of mine recently had a knee re-done with an allograft and said it was the way to go.

Of course, as soon as I decided my mom told me a story about a childhood friend of mine who almost died from a bad allograft...something about a bad donor that made a bunch of people sick. She didn't have any data to back it up, though.

Anyway, I have a plenty big scar now because the meniscus repair is a separate 3" incision. I'm happy to have it, because they weren't sure they would be able to do anything with the meniscus but they ended up repairing it.

I did have something new: the anesthesiologist did a nerve block in my leg before the procedure. It's supposed to help with pain the first day, and it did. Of course, it wore off in the middle of the night, but the anesthesiologist told me to expect that so it wasn't a big deal. I also had a cryo-cuff this time around, which they had 10 years ago but my HMO wouldn't pay for it. It's a nylon thing that goes around your knee and fills with ice water. Pretty spiff. And I have different drugs this time, oxycodone for pain (I hardly took any because it didn't hurt much) plus an antibiotic every six hours for like forever (6 days!), plus they have me taking two tylenol and two ibuprofen together every eight hours - supposedly for inflammation more than pain. I also got an anti-nausea drug before anesthesia, since it tends to make me puke. No puking this time!

So I'm hanging out in my TV room and Jake is bringing me food every few hours. I can't bend my leg (except doing exercises), which is annoying, and I don't get to shower until next week. I don't know why everyone says sponge baths are sexy...I guess I need a hot nurse and less self-respect. I missed one hockey game but plan to go on Saturday (not sure how I'm going to fit in a seat, but we'll figure something out). It take three minutes to go to the bathroom, and hands and armpits are really not suited for locomotion. I probably can't wear normal pants until the brace is off (four weeks or so), but I ordered $50 worth of cool thigh-high socks and legwarmers! I can't even be tempted to go shopping the day after Thanksgiving.

And I'm catching up on blog posts...more later!

More random crap I saw downtown

2007-11-21T18:45:00.000-05:00

Part 1: Accessories for the modern wooden man?

Part 2: Because everything is better fried....

That time of year...

2007-11-15T16:21:00.001-05:00

Safety and Convenience

2007-09-27T13:27:00.001-04:00

Old office buildings rock!

My new favorite website

2007-09-10T00:30:00.000-04:00

"Jikatabiya.com's English site is under construction. But this can use a little. If you hope old version, click here.
Please visit here in another day. You will find something change."

http://jikatabiya.com/indexe.html

I think machine translation would be more accurate. But this is lots of fun:

Spike Jikatabi is for workers in forest,
mountain, or any other tilt ground.
But nowadays, They are used for gardening, Afforestation,
& for The Earth.

They're like little, accidental poems.

Jikatabi is Japanese footwear.
So, their strainge Metal fittings
"HAZE" is disliked from foreign peaple and young japanese.
Velcro solved this problem.

NEW!
Jikatabi in colors
Many people wants them.
To Fashon, To Dance,
To Sports Training!!

2007-08-31T18:34:00.000-04:00

Holy cow, I'm wearing Bermuda shorts.

Kennywood Memories (for a small price)

2007-08-16T14:36:00.000-04:00

Every now and then I run a "Kennywood" search on eBay, and the last time it turned up this. Wow.

When I was a kid, Kennywood Park had these Peanuts themed height signs. If you were as tall as Linus you could ride some rides, mainly the kiddie rides. Then I think Lucy or Snoopy was the intermediate level, and Charlie Brown was the tallest height limit. I think you can see in the photo that it says if you're that tall you can ride the Thunderbolt - that was always the most advanced ride in the park.

After the Peanuts signs they used signs with Kenny the Kangaroo. There's one of those up from this seller too. I also vaguely remember another height sign, it was a boy and I think it looked like Howdy Doody - I don't think it was him, just some redhead with a cap or something. But I did almost all my measurement on the Peanuts signs.

I didn't go on the Thunderbolt until I was about 15, though. I was way taller than Charlie Brown by then, I just thought it was scary.

Since I moved to a different neighborhood two years ago, the right way to go to the Homestead Waterfront shopping area is to go over the Rankin Bridge. As a kid the only reason I went through Braddock and over that bridge was to go to Kennywood. Even now I think of it as the Kennywood bridge. At the end there was a big yellow Kennywood sign pointing left. Same as the small wooden signs you would see all around the city directing you to the park.

I would love to have the Charlie Brown, but it's probably not a $2000 investment for me. Maybe not for other people either, since it didn't sell the first time it was listed. I wonder if I can find an old Kennywood direction sign for a more reasonable price....

Seller's other items:
http://myworld.ebay.com/djcuffin/

Here's a great Kennywood tribute page with lots of old stuff:
http://piacasdad.tripod.com/id84.html

Avatar Sociology 101

2007-08-03T23:52:00.000-04:00

NPR has discovered online avatars: Alter Egos in a Virtual World
The story is a little cursory, but it has its moments.

Like the bit about the woman who made her City of Heroes avatar "the biggest, blackest guy I could find" and found out that her fellow players gave her a lot more respect and less lip than when she played with a female avatar. I'm fascinated because it's like a controlled experiment on how people automatically discount what women say just because of how they look.

It makes me wonder about men who use female avatars. Do they think that people discount what they say and do, or are they just too busy staring at their character's boobies to notice? Or do they get caught up in "acting like a girl" and think that's part of the fun? Apparently it's hard for people with privilege to see discrimination even when it's directed at them.

There's also a picture in the story of significantly disabled man with Duchenne muscular dystrophy who plays Star Wars Galaxies as a mysterious, armored (possibly robotic?) fighter. His online avatar is ironically like his real body, except that it's hard metal that hides the avatar to its eyes instead of twisted, immobile flesh encased in medical equipment. Online gaming is a unique social interaction for him, the player says, because he gets treated like an average person online.

This wasn't a new concept for me, but I still feel I should apologize for my somewhat uncharitable reaction: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."