FF: Lenten Series: Week 3

When: Easter 1979

Where: Mamaw and Papaw's trailer (I think)

Crochet is hip, especially when your mamaw makes a rockin' cape and hat for you for Easter. Not much else to say about that.

A little late for a vent.

It's a little after midnight and I really ought to be heading to bed, but thought that I deserved that giant bowl of ice cream after reading 8 technical summaries today. I only have two more to go and I think I'm going to knock those out before I actually sleep tonight. Otherwise, they will knock me out as I go to sleep tonight. Either way, there's sleep in the not-too-distant future. Yea!

In other news, I ordered some shoes a couple weeks ago, which were promptly delivered (I think I posted and I would linkie here, but it's a boring post and I'm too lazy right now). Unfortunately, they didn't fit. So, I'm exchanging them. It's a painless process, I send them the shoes via a printed UPS label that I stick onto the original packaging and they send me new shoes. Next day air (from the phone call, not the receipt of the original shoes). I was supposed to receive them today. Unfortunately, FedEx (don't know why the shipping company changed) decided that my shoes were much too valuable to leave on my doorstep even though there was no signature required. They tried to deliver at 2:30 this afternoon. Who's home at 2:30??? Do they just pay drivers to attempt to deliver stuff while people aren't home and hope we'll pick it up at the distribution center so they don't have to try any more? It's absurd. Leave the package on the doorstep. People who don't live here can't figure out how to get into the building. People who live here sometimes have problems finding finding their way after a long night out. My package (sent overnight with no signature required) will be just fine sitting on my doorstep for 3 hours until I get home from the office.

That is, if I can figure out how to get into the building.

End rant.

Cleverness in Government

The city of Chattanooga sent the city of Atlanta a truck of water today along with a proclamation. Today is "Give our Georgia Friends a Drink Day." It's well-worth your time to read the article...even if you have to skip to the end to read the proclamation.

J'adore...

...en ewww!
C'est un poisson de gâteau!
Bon appétite!

One food

I've finally decided that if I was stuck eating only one food for the rest of my life, it would be french fries or otherwise fried potatoes. If I had to pick just one kind, Walter's fries from the Trojan Horse in Bloomington.

Friday Flashback: Lenten Theme: Week 2

Mom was kind enough to send along a continuation of the Easter theme. This week, we'll explore the suspicious cleanliness of the dresses.

When: Easter, 1983.

Where: The farm, before the wall-to-wall carpeting was installed.

Last on the Bunny's list: Somehow we all look reasonably happy to be wearing the pretty (itchy) Easter dresses. Jenn looks a little dubious. I asked Mom how she kept us clean. She reminded me that the Easter Bunny did not show up until after church. This way, if we misbehaved during church, one call could stop the bunny from showing. It, thankfully, never came to that.

I should mention that Mom made the lovely purses we're carrying. If I remember correctly, she later made different covers for them as well that weren't white (and could be carried after Labor Day--Thank God!).

So. Very. Sleepy.

I discovered that I was very tired this afternoon. Perhaps it was the smallish salad (with orzo and crab) that I had for lunch that didn't quite sustain me. Perhaps it was the papers I was reading. Perhaps it was the M&M's that should have perked me up, but put me in a sugar coma. Perhaps it was the class that covered in painstaking detail stuff that I've seen before for an hour and a half. I don't think my chin ever actually touched the desk, but only because of the strange sitting configuration of the desks.

I took a brisk walk home after class and tried to work for a while and decided that a nap was the best thing for me. I woke up an hour and a half later. Ugh.

Blacker is the new black

A blacker black has been developed.
Kinda cool.

There's how much sugar in that?

Tastespotting linked to Foodsel today, reminding me of the short discussion of Smarties on Daily Pie after last Halloween.

You can pick the food and it shows you the equivelant number of sugar cubes, sticks of butter, and batteries (calories?). It will also tell you how long you would need to work out for different activities to burn the calories you took in. Kinda interesting but kinda sad. Enjoy!!

Before you freak out with the numbers, the default serving (for M&M's, at least), seems quite large. I think it defaults to 1 cup of the food. I have eaten more than a cup of M&M's in a sitting, but it's not the norm.

Silly

I don't work well without motivation. I've decided to sign up for an olympic distance triathlon (1k swim, 40k bike, 10k run) in April which doesn't give me a lot of time to train. I'm especially concerned about the run. I've got a plan and I'm trying to be reasonable and not overdo things early. I've hooked up with the Vandy Tri Club for support. Today was my first two-a-day with them in a while. I spent about 50 minutes in the pool and got in about 2500 yards. Then, I had a spin session that lasted every darn minute of the 40 minute workout. I thought we were done after that. I was wrong. We still had ab work left. It was a great workout and I think I'll sleep well tonight--if I don't wake up with my legs cramping!

Wine Tasting

When Kristi and Dwayne were in town, we did a tasting of Chateau Paveil de Luze, a Margaux from 2003 and 2005. These were both very good, but didn't have the characteristic Margaux nose or taste. This was surprising but not disappointing.

The 2003 had a full, earthy flavor and a very nice mouth feel and had a lovely, clear light garnet appearance. With a while to open up, it was ready to drink and will be drinkable for a long time to come.

The 2005 was a little sharp and earthy but not as smooth. It was a nearly-clear dark garnet color. It wasn't quite ready, and persisted in remaining "closed", but should be very nice in a few more years. It was better the next day, perhaps because the '03 was gone and I couldn't directly compare.

Truism for the Day:

On NPR's The Splendid Table,

"There is a Midwestern love for big, thick, dense things."
--Jane Stern in reference to the pancakes at the Grove Cafe in Ames, IA

Friday Flashback

When: I have no earthly idea. The wee-one was around for this series of pics so I'm going to guess 1983. It was definitely Easter Sunday. That's the only way I can explain the hat.

Where: The living room at the farm.

The Face: I am accused of making this face even now. It's evidently my I'm-really-tense face. Other interpretations?

In other news: Mamaw and Papaw used to bring us Easter dresses home from Florida. It was a pretty big deal. I honestly don't remember much about it other than it was a big deal and we were forced to wear the hat and little white gloves on this occasion and the dresses (lace) were unbearably itchy. We had to wear the dresses until all the grandparents saw us after church. They seemed to delay their arrival just to torture us.

Exam Week

This was the first round of midterms for the semester. My professors seem to have conspired and put their exams on consecutive days, therefore making me a little crazy. Well, maybe not crazy, but definitely reclusive. So now it's Friday night and I have no responsibilities and a lot of tension to release. There's a bottle of wine open, steak and potatoes for dinner, and bad TV on the internet. What else does the internet have? Shopping--specifically, zappos.com. I bought shoes. Cute, brown Clarks with free delivery.

But wait. There's better news: they've already been shipped. Some person is standing around in a warehouse on Friday night making sure my shoes are in the mail right now. I suppose they're also making sure that I'll order from them in the future, but I'm really more interested in the fact that they were shipped within an hour of my ordering them. I'm doing a little happy dance. I'm just not sure if it's because of the week being over or the shoes. I'll blame the shoes.

Swim Workout

I didn't have a lot of time for a swim workout tonight, but really wanted to do something. I managed 2000 yards in about 45 minutes and a really challenging workout (for me).

• 200 SKPS (800 total yards)
• 4 x 100, descending (1:30, 1:25, 1:20, 1:15)
• 8 x 50, 25 sprint, 30 seconds tread legs-only or 30 water crunches, 25 sprint on 1:30
• 4 x 100, descending (1:30, 1:25, 1:20, 1:15)

Total 2000

I made it through the first descending set, killed myself on the 50s, and missed the last 100 on the last set. I'll get it next time.

WFA WTF?

All the news today seemed to be centered around the congressional baseball/steroid hearings and I got really frustrated at the fact that our lawmakers are spending time investigating something that really doesn't affect the general public and that there was so much media coverage of said hearings. I kept getting a mental image of the big, bad committee asking hard questions during the session, then scurrying around for autographs during breaks.

So, I decided to find out a little about the committee that's running the hearings, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, to see how baseball fits with the plan. The charter, from the webpage:

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is the main
investigative committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. It has
jurisdiction to investigate any federal program and any matter with federal
policy implications.

Okay. This does not help with how baseball fits with the committee, unless baseball is suddenly a federal program. We'll move on to jurisdiction (again FTFW):

The legislative jurisdiction of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform includes the following areas, as set forth in House Rule X, clause 1:
• Federal civil service, including intergovernmental personnel; and the
status of officers and employees of the United States, including their
compensation, classification, and retirement;
• Municipal affairs of the District of Columbia in general (other than
appropriations);
• Federal paperwork reduction;
• Government management and accounting measures generally;
• Holidays and celebrations;
• Overall economy, efficiency, and management of government operations and
activities, including federal procurement;
• National archives;
• Population and demography generally, including the Census;
• Postal service generally, including transportation of the mails;
• Public information and records;
• Relationship of the federal government to the states and municipalities
generally; and
• Reorganizations in the executive branch of the government.

Okay, so I'll stretch things a bit and go with public information and records. It's a stretch, but I'm going to assume that's where they're coming from. However, if we're going to make this argument, I'll say that they need to be talking to individuals from all arenas wherein steroid abuse is an issue. These are probably primarily sports, but definitely not limited to baseball. The talks should be talking about the effects of steroids on the human body (for the use of public information) not the future hall-of-fame eligibility of the individual in question. Let that question go to the MLB governing body.

In the meantime, the 41 members of the committee have (so far) spent two sessions (this go-'round) in this investigation. Even conservative calculations would show astronomical billable hours. From there, we'll go back to the committee's homepage, on the right, under "Key Issues", and point out the "Waste, Fraud, and Abuse" (WFA) link. Yes, friends, this is the group that investigates WFA issues.

It's the very definition of irony.

Not quite a flying car, but close enough to impress me:

It took me a few minutes to figure out what they meant by "disappearing car door", but once I watched the video and had it spelled out for me, I drooled. Watch the whole video, enjoy the narrator's accent, struggle to imagine mainstream car companies adopting this.

The company is located in So. Cal. and the website seems a little slap-dash, but it seems like a viable idea.

Union Rules?

Henna

Having tried since before Christmas to schedule a time with Anu to play with henna, we finally managed to squeeze in about an hour on Saturday while Ladybug was taking her nap. It was a lot of fun and the results are great! The art will last about a week.

Spin Class

Just took my first spin class in years.

Primary accomplishment: I didn't puke.

Food!

It was a big week for food. My tasty, but failed attempt at a king cake last year made me a little dubious this year, but a very easy recipe came about on Tastespotting and there was success and yes, a plastic baby.

I finally had time and an occasion to make a baklava to take in to the starving grad students. The recipe is based on Martha Stewart's baklava recipe but modified to make it more reasonable.

It had to be sampled prior to release.

The weekend visitors inspired pancakes and sausage 'n gravy (made with Alan's pork sausage). The buttermilk biscuit (featuring cake flour) and buttermilk pancake recipes came from America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, my current favorite general-purpose cookbook.

We also had good BBQ at Jim 'n Nick's. Kristi and I drooled over the collard greens. One of us, yes, the good auntie, shared with Ladybug.

I've got to get back to the gym this week!

Ladybug Goes to Nashville

Ladybug and her parents visited Jeremy and me in Nashville this weekend. We had great food, great talks, and great fun. We spent most of Ladybug's endless energy at the park with the dragon (Fannie Mae Dees Park). First, we had to get bundled up for the stroller ride:

Then, find the dragon:

Play on and around the dragon:

Help the dragon with some hygene:

And, elsewhere in the fantastic park, learn about climbing (great reach!):

Fun with tunnels (a video I hope):

Later, there was some fort-building--all fine and good until the bears took over:

Update

I'm posting to let people know that my general area of Nashville was unaffected by the storms, but there's a major effort in helping the nearby communities that were devastated. Things are pretty major when a campus-wide e-mail is sent out looking for volunteers for relief and when the storms become common locker room talk.

Storms and other natural drama haven't kept me from posting this week--sheer laziness has. There are several things to report. I'll (hopefully) be posting about these in the next week:

• Found
• Ladybug comes to Nashville
• Henna
• Baklava & King Cake
• Wine -- Margaux...mmm!

In the meantime, I'll thank everyone for kind thoughts and calls on the night of the storms. Keep those who were affected in your thoughts.

Friday Flashback

Because I miss nomadshan's Friday Flashbacks and Mom just sent me this picture, I decided to do one of 'em myself.

When: It has to be 1981 or 1982.

Who (l-r): Amanda, Jessica (I think), Michael, Audra, me

Where: The old Otis Park pool.

Demonstrating either my love for the water or my short attention span: Probably more the latter. I couldn't be bothered to wave at the camera as we were (obviously) being instructed to do. Amanda, fortunately, has the same problem. As I remember it, we spent most summer days at the Otis Park pool, thus my fantastic tan. This is where I failed my first swimming lessons. Ahh...the irony.