More Unnecessary Excitement

After the excitement of the grocery, I was starving when I got home and decided that a stir-fry sounded good. I started the rice, and pulled my beloved cast iron skillet out and preheated it while getting the veggies ready. The veggie prep took a little longer than expected and I noticed that the pan looked really hot when I was ready to add stuff. I threw in the canola oil and saw it instantly change colors and start smoking. Oops.

The fan was turned on, skillet put directly under the fan. Bad choice. Oil ignited. Pan back on the stove top. Turned off the offending burner, juggled the other burners to minimize damage to...whatever was going to be damaged. I still have a fire. Not good.

For everyone's information, the flash point of canola oil is 270-290 degrees Celsius. Electric stoves suck.

I managed to arrange things such that the burners were off, the pan was sitting on a burner and not an immediate threat to anything nearby, and found the salt to throw upon the flaming mess. This put out the flame, but there was still a lot of smoke. I was surprised at how long it took for the smoke detector to go off, but it finally did. I ran to tend to the noise, the imminent danger subsided. I tried to open the windows and found that the windows in the apartment don't hold themselves open. I ran to get books to prop the windows open and finally manage this task.

Fifteen minutes later, I'm sitting down to a stir-fry dinner in a smoky apartment. It's a good thing I bought the beer.

An aside: I didn't think to take pictures of the charred salt/oil mess, but in the future, when I try to set my kitchen on fire, I'll consider the blogging aspect and do my best to document the event.

Everybody Panic!

I hadn't been to the grocery since the first week I moved. My calendar indicates that it's been three full weeks. The grocery trips are dreaded and avoided at all costs. I try to be very smart while shopping. I ran out of milk last night and bread yesterday afternoon. The trip was unavoidable. Normally, I would send a Jeremy, but since I don't have a Jeremy around right now, I took a deep breath, make a list, and set out on my own.

A few days ago, the weather tracker on my homepage popped up with a severe weather alert for Nashville. It said that it was going to snow Thursday. Through the week, that prediction has crept up so that we're supposed to expect snow sometime tonight. I'm thinking that it's really nice that they're planning ahead and alerting the public to winter storms.

Unfortunately, this isn't one. It's supposed to snow an inch. Max.

With all the fuss about the upcoming storm, people are doing what they do when there's imminent severe weather. Get out and go to the grocery. While not exactly in full panic mode, there were many, many people stocking up for the "storm". Lots of bread, milk, and eggs being bought. Most people don't know what to do with eggs that don't come prepared on some sort of biscuit from a drive-thru window, but there's some sort of internal list that includes buying eggs in case of bad weather. I think there's a glitch in the code.

With the obvious impending doom, I assessed my basket and threw in a six of beer for good measure, but skipped the eggs. We have to have priorities. At least I know what to do with beer.

Black Hole of Super Bowl

To demonstrate the separation between myself and "reality", I checked my work mail this morning and read through the subject lines and senders to decide which to blindly delete (road closures on base, etc.), I found one with something like "GO BLUE DAY!!" I paused, and thought for a second, dismissed it as a Navy something-or-other, deleted it, and carried on to read my other mail. As I was reading, I suddenly remembered this Super Bowl thing. Right...Indy's playing...go blue...Colts...got it. All I've heard/read is that Marvin Harrison's being forced to talk to the media on Media Day...and did.

I have to ask myself, "Self, do I miss the hype?"
No.

Will I watch the game? Yes.
Go Colts!!...err Blue....err...sigh.

I got rhythm...

"I don't got rhythm"

I went fencing tonight. Normal drills, footwork, minor amounts of push-ups and sit-ups. Good stuff. We broke up into groups of four, worked on time drills where one person starts out down 0-3 with a minute left in the bout and has to come back for the win. It's a good drill--makes you think and be sort of aggressive. The other side is interesting, too, being up 3-0 and trying to hold your own through the rest of the bout.

After this, I was in line to take my lesson and happened upon a bit of a jump rope drill where you had to move your hands and feet in different ways at different times. For each swing of the rope, you switch your feet three times, making you lead the jump with a different foot each time. It was difficult. It took a little more rhythm than I am used to. Fun though.

I think I was at practice for 2.5 hours.
Now for dinner, a little work, and some sleep.

IU Spring (?) Open

This weekend was my first weekend home since classes started. IU hosted it's annual Spring Open and Jeremy and I went to support the club. It turned out to be a great turnout--an A2 tournament with 37 competitors. Nine of us were from Bloomington Fencing! We had at least one person fencing a tournament for the first time. Everyone did great. Check us out!

Update: Shannon pointed out that the resuls listed a pretty sneaky person twice. I e-mailed the organizer and got the following response:

We're trying to figure why Ask FRED is screwing up some of the results. One of the Cory A's is really Max Rockman. It is correct on Fencing Time, but is wrong when it is exported into Ask Fred. We're trying to fix it.

So, that's the story. I don't know which Cory is Max and which Cory is Cory.

Tonight's Swim

I managed to make it to the pool tonight. It was a struggle that lasted all day. I wanted to go, but the sleepits were out and I was terribly hungry, having forgotten to take snacks with me to the office (a six-inch sub evidently is not sufficient sustenance for a full day). It seemed that no one wanted me to swim today, having received an article about a guy who thinks it's a good idea to swim down the Amazon. Even when I got to the gym, I was freezing and took a hot, hot shower before going into the pool and was still considering just heading home.

When I finally convinced myself that I couldn't just stand there and I took the dive in, the water felt great. I wasn't necessarily "gliding" as I would have liked, but it felt really good.

The Workout:

• 200 SKPS
• 5 x 200 (easy, medium, easy, hard, easy; 10 seconds rest; last 50 of each hypoxic 5)
• 4 x 50 kick on a minute
• 500 swim

2500 yards total.

I then went home and ate everything in sight. I'm much better now.

JanSport

Many years ago (let's go with the Fall of 1996), I purchased a backpack for college. This bag was to be carried around with me wherever I went, it was destined to carry all my crap through school, camping, working, and triathlon-ing. It finally got to the point where I couldn't actually ask it to do anything beyond sit there and take up space.

I then remembered the JanSport "lifetime" guarnatee. My backpack recently got sent back to JanSport. They promptly sent me a postcard telling me that it arrived alright, and tonight, I got the (original) backpack back, safe and sound, as promised. Several things had been fixed, altered, manipulated, agitated, or otherwise changed, but the bag, along with all the safety pins from races was returned as good as new.

Hindsight tells me I should have saved the postcard with the arrival notice and that I should have taken a "before" picture, but that was before the blog. I willl know better in the future. I am pleased with the outcome of the situation. I have a bag that will serve me well through the next few years, and I have been vaguely entertained at the prospect of sending back a well-used bag and having it completely repaired for the cost of shipping.

It is a bit smaller than it was originally, though.
I suppose I should list that as a drawback, but I'm just happy to have my bag back.

Thank you, JanSport!!!

Death Ray

It's time I came clean. I was bold enough to wear the shirt this week, but the news leaked, my "secret project" finally came to light. According to some unnamed people, I've been working on a non-lethal focused-beam project for the last few years. This coupled with the blood-cell-sized memory and the artificial black ice, I really ought to be set for life. Instead, I'm living the life of a mindless grad-student. Go figure.

"Second bottle. Ahhh...She looks for me"

Leftovers for dinner...no workout...what on earth could I talk about? I've got the third (rather than second) bottle of the Montes open, with the thought that I'll probably take what's left home tomorrow night. I've not been home since the beginning of the semester. I'm ready to see Jeremy, the Moose, and Cricket.

Ahh...segue...Dad requested that I send a couple pictures of the apartment to him via e-mail. I said, "Why don't you check out my blog?"

"Grumble, grumble, blog, grumble," was his response.


Picutres are below. Hi Dad.


This is the living room, as you enter and turn around. It has cute baskets, lots of lighting, and no cable, much to the dismay of the cable companie(s!) around. I stopped answering the phone (seriously) because of the people trying to call and let me know what kind of deals they were going to give me for cable. Interesting, yes, but not productive for me. I want to see a.) the Super Bowl (Go Colts!!!), and b.) March Madness. I'll figure out something for B.

This is the view when you walk into the apartment. Yes, the bike is used. I personally don't think that it stands out that much in the big picture. If nothing else, it's additional seating.

This is from the couch area. I suppose it would be called the dining room, but it's really not big enough to be a dining "room". Instead, I'll call it the coat closet and pantry and the only light I have control over when I walk in the door.

Finally, the kitchen area. It's not huge, but compared to other apartments I looked at, it's giagnormous. It's really very functional and aside from the fact that it's all electric, I love it. I have yet to see an electric bill, but I'm supposed to be very happy for the TVA, so go TVA! We'll see how long the honeymoon lasts, seeing as my refridgerator has been running essentially non-stop since I moved in.

Tasty Tasting for a Reasonable Price

Clos du Bois Cabernet Sauvignon 2003 Sonoma County ~$15

Montes Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 D.O. Colchagua Valley, Chile ~$8

Tasted together 1/17/07. With my congestion, I don't feel comfortable identifing flavors, but both were a little fruit forward, but not overpowering. Quite plesant, the Clos was slighty more tannic than the Montes, but they have (with my congestion) very similar taste profiles. Additionally, both were good the next day with no hint of the nasty "old wine" taste. There was enough of the Clos to have 3 days later and it was, remarkably, still very drinkable.

I opened another bottle of the Montes later that week and had a second taste about three days later and while it wasn't as good as first taste, it was still quite acceptable with dinner.

Rock Star!!!

My first attempt at posting a picture might as well be with little Ladybug. She's essentially a niece and this picture is several months old, but is still one of my favorites. Check out the rock-star snarl. Also, go check out her real auntie's page where more recent-er pictures were posted less recently than this one, though only slightly.

Workout du Jour

Went fencing tonight. It was about two and a half hours of pretty constant stuff. It's really remarkable how quickly that time goes by. So, the workout went something like this:

• Run a little over a mile to loosen up. My mile was a little under 8 minutes, as close as I can tell.
• Run a suicide sprint. Just one. I love these...would have done a couple more, but there was a plan in place.
• Push-ups, sit-ups, leg lifts, a "pyramid" (holding yourself up using only your elbows and toes for some period of time--we did 45 seconds).
• Footwork...about 15 minutes
• Bladework...about 25 minutes
• Free fencing (I only got in one bout)
• Lesson, in which I wasn't a complete spazz.

I suppose I should mention the walking there and back with the gear. It's about a half-mile walk. I'm definitely warm after.

Anyway, it was a good night. Now I have to eat and work for a bit. Start over again tomorrow.

Today's Workout -- Swim

I finally managed to make it back to the pool. Last week didn't go so well in the swimming arena, but tonight worked out fine. Below is the workout.

• 200 SKPDS (200 each of Swim, Kick, Pull, Drill, Swim)
• This set has a name, but I can't remember it for the life of me:
• 4 x 25 Fly (10 seconds rest)
• 100 IM (30 seconds rest)
• 4 x 25 Back
• 100 IM
• 4 x 25 Breast
• 100 IM
• 4 x 25 Free
• 100 IM
• 200 Cool Down

2000 yards total.

Standard Deviation

One of my favorite jr. high teachers e-mailed today asking for help filling out a survey (www.survey.jokai.net) for one of the Bedford Middle School math classes. These 6th grade students will be using the survey as a data-collecting tool and then spending about a week analyzing the data. The survey closes 2/4/07. If you've got 5 minutes, go and clickie away. The math minds of the future will thank you.

Last year's survey generated over 2000 responses and over 150 pages of analysis, all of which are available for your viewing enjoyment.

Clumsy First Attempt

Having considered the world of blogging for quite some time, the strong desire to procrastinate on homework has driven me to take action on this particular non-homework activity. So, here is the clumsy first attempt at posting to the page.