Whoever came up with the idea of emergency-vehicle alarms was a genius. Whenever I hear one, I can feel my adrenaline ramp up, and I feel like I should be doing something. Oh yes.
Although I never had (nor currently have) any interest in the tediousness of medical school, if I could snap my fingers and find myself turned into an E.R. doc, I would do it (right now, right here). Actually, I would do it if it would turn me into any sort of medical first responder. I want to be the person who keeps her cool in an emergency, barking out a few terse orders and getting things under control. I’m not talking about everyday emergencies like heart attacks or broken legs. I’m talking about natural disasters, unexpected situations, and – yes – even battle fronts.
I’ve looked into Red Cross training, and they don’t offer much for “civilians” beyond CPR and babysitting training.* How do I re-set a bone after a fall in the mountains? How do I keep someone with a bullet wound from going septic if help is not immediately forthcoming? What about serious burns, or crushed limbs, or … ? Really, I have a strong survivalist streak in me (there isn’t such a large distance between the far left and the far right).
This desire is a combination of generational happenstance (as I’ve mentioned before, I was absolutely certain during my childhood and teen years spent under Reagan leadership that the Soviets were going to attack and turn our world upside-down) and my entertainment choices (although I could do without most of the interpersonal drama, I enjoy the LOST scenario**).
If the aliens attacked, a meteor hit the earth, the Day After Tomorrow arrived, or the terrorists try again, you’d want me on your team. And what a survival story we would live.
*They do offer special classes for first responders, but from my reading, it looks like it is for people who already have a job, not just interested bystanders like me.
**We’re only halfway through season 2, so don’t be commenting with info I wouldn’t know until season 4, you hear!
It’s back, for a four-week engagement!
I am grateful that our household is such that we fill our recycling bin up for every recycling pick-up, but our trashcan takes a month before we realize we really shouldn’t forget this week to put the bin at the curb.
Clarification: I should mention that our community does single-stream recycling (i.e., put everything in the same container), and our recycling bin is larger than our trash bin.
Even if — especially if — you have several great ideas for blog posts, do not wait until the evening to begin writing. Evening is not a good time to actually get anything worthwhile written.
(First throw-away post of this month.)
The moon is always so big just after it rises, and right before it sets. I haven’t ever been able to move fast enough in the evening when I see a gorgeous moonrise to capture it, but when I saw its massive beauty out of the kitchen window this morning, I ran out in my PJs and snapped some pics.
I took a community photography class last Fall, and although there are a few things I remember from it, I couldn’t quite remember what we were supposed to do for moon shots. And this one is cropped, but the brightness of the moon against the darkness of the tree branches was spectacular. Unfortunately, to get a crisp shot of the craters, I had to take it at a fast shutter speed, which meant that the branches were almost invisible in the forced darkness. Do you see the craters down along the bottom right, and the belly button in the middle left? You may have to look at the large version (or even the original size) to make those out.
Have you heard about the Great Pumpkin Shortage of 2009? A Google search returns over 150,000 pages about it.
We tried making a pumpkin pie from sugar pumpkin, back in our California days, and it came out so stringy and unpleasant to eat, that we decided canned pumpkin still counted as making a pie “from scratch”. What to do? Thanksgiving is just around the corner and it seems that canned pumpkin is nowhere to be found in Des Moines. Lucky for me, I had recently come across a knitting blog post raving about using Hubbard squash in place of pumpkin in pumpkin bread. So, for the last Farmer’s Market of the season, I asked the Consort to bring some back.
I chose a small-ish one and cut it in half and scooped out the seeds:
Then I put it in a roasting pan with a bit of water in the bottom and roasted it at 350 degrees until the skin was easily pierced with a fork (took me a little over an hour — a larger one would, obviously, take longer):
After you let it cool a little while, you scrape the flesh from the skin, and mash it up nice and smooth (any extra can be frozen or stored in the refrigerator for a while):
Then follow your favorite pumpkin pie recipe, substituting 1.5 cups of squash for 1 can of pumpkin. If yours happens to be on the bottom of the pie dish that you decide to use, and you realize this only after you’ve pre-baked the crust (rickin’ frickin’!), well then, the recipe on the side of a can of pumpkin (if you happen to still have one in your pantry) works just dandy:
I made a pastry crust using 50% white flour and 50% wheat flour, since squash is a strong enough flavored filling that the whole wheat doesn’t overpower it.
If you enjoy your pie American-style, then you and your offspring will hurry off to the local shop to buy a can (a can!!!) of ready-made whipped cream.
If you prefer your pie European-style, then you wouldn’t have even thought to add heavy cream to the shopping list, because it didn’t even cross your mind that a delicious homemade pie would require anything other than itself, in moist deliciousness. (So there!)
However you prefer it, you will be happy to know that Hubbard is a perfectly successful substitute for canned pumpkin. You’ll know because your offspring will assert this several times (high praise, indeed).
And you can even use that extra squash to make pumpkin muffins:
Which turn out pretty damn good, too.
(PS: How do the pictures come out on your screen? I tried something different this time, and although it looks fine on mine, I wouldn’t want to do it again if it creates problems on other machines.)
As I’ve aged, and lived through a couple of frame-shakers (two big babies, of course), I realize that my spine needs regular correction. Chiropractic is useful for shifting those bones back into position, as is regular exercise. Because I haven’t been doing either of those for a couple of months, and because I’ve been spending WAY too much time at my laptop on the couch (sometimes playing too much Pariboro), my right wrist is acting up. (As it has in the past [And yes, I realize that these flare-ups happen to be noticeable when I am in the middle of a knitting project, but I don't accept that the knitting creates the problem. --HUSH! There is no correlation. None.].)
I could go to the chiropractor, but right now I’m just too lazy to call and set up an appointment. So I’ve decided that what I need to do is stop stressing my body irresponsibly. No more using my laptop on my lap. I have a very nice desk setup, and I can just use my laptop up there, plugged in to a keyboard, at a desk chair, and with a foot rest at my feet.
This means that I get to work much earlier in the morning — instead of drinking a third cup of tea while reading the NYT or scanning my blog feed, I find myself at my desk, and if I happen to be up here, I might as well get cracking on whatever project is on my desk. Mondays often start up more productive than the rest of the week, however, so I’ll need to see if this trend remains consistent
When you start a blog, you are adventurous. Your first few posts are usually throw-aways, because you spend big chunks of your online time browsing others’ bloglists, and commenting on sites that look interesting, hoping to make friends.
Then you get your first comments. Wonder of wonders! You have online friends! You write more and more, they comment more and more, and you tell those tales — funny, sad, terrifying, comforting — that make you, you.
But then some people leave the blogosphere, or you find other media for your social cravings, and you begin to write less and less. You don’t want to fall into your anecdotage — telling the same stories over again, not realizing that your readers (or, IRL, your friends) remember hearing that same story three times already.
Your cast of characters shrinks. What is right to share about your 10-year-old is not cool to share about that same kid at 15 (even though their wit has gotten sharper, their insights have gotten more mind-blowing and complex, and they are turning into fabulous people [despite their attempts at driving you to the madhouse]).
So you post less, and visit sites less. You read your archives and wonder at the volume and the quality of some of the writing. Where did that all go? You begin to wonder whether you should shut down these pages. (And yes, I know I’ve mentioned this a few times already — my anecdotage hasn’t matured yet!)
But you don’t. Because you still enjoy this place and the people who visit. So November arrives, and you decide you won’t be putting up buttons and links, you won’t be joining communities of strangers all doing the same thing as you, but you will be taking this place seriously, even if it means only posting a picture.
Yeah, yo — write mo’!
- three half-read books waiting to be finished (a horror anthology, which doesn’t; a gripping novel, which hasn’t; and a hard-core war fantasy, which isn’t)
- two socks in process
- a Reader-ful of blogs and photo streams to comment on
- new music from the library to listen to and return
- scintillating blog posts to write
I have a great post about procrastination I would like to write, but not today.
The Rodrigo y Gabriela concert was fabulous. It’s amazing what a sound system and flashing lights will do to music — especially a guitar duo. When you listen to their recorded music, you can imagine it being played in a small room. But on stage! It’s a whole nother beast.
Driving up to Minneapolis, I began to list all the concerts I have been to in my life. The list felt pitifully short (I didn’t go see a concert until I was in college). Over a delicious tapas dinner (and entire bottle of wine) before the show, the Consort helped me remember a few other concerts we had seen. I am posting it here because this blog has become my backup memory — and these are not in strict chronological order, mind you.
- Sting (at some huge sportsplex in the DC area)
- They Might Be Giants (at the Bayou [ah, the Bayou!] in DC)
- The Fixx (again, at the Bayou)
- WHFS-tival, with King Missile and lots of other early 1990s bands (somewhere in Maryland, outside of DC)
- They Might Be Giants (at a small club in San Francisco)(I *know*! Twice — and we like them, but not THAT much; although they do put on a good show)
- The Indigo Girls (at some outdoor amphitheater in Berkeley)
- The Spin Doctors (with Soul Asylum [*I* say, the Consort says it wasn't Soul Asylum, but I'm pretty sure; we need to check this with the friends we went to the concert with]; at the Bay Area Six Flags)
- Tori Amos (at an intimate theater space in San Francisco)
- Yonder Mountain String Band (with Cornmeal; at Des Moines’ Simon Estes Amphitheater)
- Suzanne Vega (in a small theater in New Hampshire)
- Natalie MacMaster (in a small theater in Vermont)
- Rodrigo y Gabriela (in Minneapolis)
I think that’s it. My sister invited us to go see Nine Inch Nails in California, but Impera was still a baby and I was just too tired to even consider it (which was a killer because *I* was the one to introduce my sisters to NIN). And to think there’s a meme going around on Facebook of “My Top 50 Favorite Concerts”. Golly!
oh, yess.
