This is my new favorite blog: Four Pounds Flour.

This is my new favorite quote:

Why bother deciphering a recipe over 150 years old?

You can take a collection of words and measurements written long ago, and turn it into a physical object. You can create something that looks, smells, and tastes just like it did hundreds of years ago

I dunno about y'all, but I was a strange child who read a lot of books (ok, I retract, we were all strange children who read a lot of books, point taken), and I wanted nothing....nothing...more than to be able to time travel for a very good chunk of strange childhood. Still do, to a certain degree. I remember the first time I realized, in a museum, that I was looking at something created well in advance of anything common to my life...and that it still existed. That was the part that blew me away the most, I think.

Cooking historical food from verifiable vintage recipes seems like such a magical balance of the permanent and the transient. Plus they drank a hell of a lot of very tasty sounding punches.

**Double Prizes!** I do not now, or ever, want to live in Michigan, but if someone offered me a job at this collection...well...it's not that far a drive from Toronto:
Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project

It dawned on me today that I am - or will be, come December - halfway through my master's program.  That is an exceedingly cheery, and somewhat sobering thought.  Hanging in there with two classes a semester (or one for summer school) and just going year round is, in the end, paying off in the manner I had hoped; saying "oh, well, only a year and a half to go" sounds vastly shorter than two (why? I do not know).

Sobering, because I also realized I had to have a come to Jesus moment with myself and figure out what I wanted to take in the next seven classes, given that I have two requireds left (Research Methods and the culminating project, which has to be the pen- or -ultimate semester), and I'd very much like to do an internship.  Which leaves four. 

FOUR.  Shit! I have to figure out kind of what I want to be when I grow up.  

(For the record, I think I have, but we'll maintain a certain level of broadmindedness until such a time as I sign a contract, eh?)

A) We still need libraries, online or otherwise
B) We still need librarians
C) We still need librarians who understand cataloging

Google's Book Search

It's also why I stand by my half-joke that Google needs a few staff librarians to actually, y'know, enhance the user experience, or whatever jargon you want to use.  As the other half-joke says: Librarian: The Original Search Engine.

I was lying in bed this morning, having one of my twice-yearly sleep ins, and got to thinking that I am not even yet at halfway to the Biblical three score and ten (though, admittedly, that's next year); I'm at the end of the 'youthful' demographic (18-34), and I now still have mid-30s to enjoy before tearing up my late 30s.  And then I thought, you know, if I fulfill my genetic potential, at least from the paternal side, I've got at least another 55 years to go, if not 70+ (they're a long lived bunch), and it was shocking, humbling, and actually thrilling to think how much time I have to do all sorts of awesomely cool stuff. 

As Martha Stewart would say, it's a good thing.

I am finally getting around to reading Henry Fielding's "The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling", and in passing, I should also point out that I do have some final work due in a week's time for my summer school class, so perhaps diving into an Augustan novel is not the best diversionary tactic, but then again, perhaps it is.  Hard to say.  At any rate, this is a very funny book, even a bare minimum of pages in (and yes, I'm aware of the fact that I'm starting to write like it, bear with me), but it did cause this question to crop up in my mind: out of the following options, which would you rather be?

"...impudent slut, a wanton hussy, an audacious harlot, a wicked jade, a vile strumpet..."

As much as I quite like the notion of being an audacious harlot, I think I shall have to cast my vote for a wicked jade.

UPDATE: The nascent librarian in me couldn't rest without giving the interblegs a good shakedown, and given the apparent accepted origins of the derogatory term 'jade' for a woman, I think I will have to shift my allegiance to "audacious harlot".  But I'd still like to be wicked, please.

Before we go any further, let me point out that there is not a whole lot in the way of princess material around our house.  We didn't go overboard with the gender neutral toys or anything, but we have a lot more stuffed animals and cars and books and that sort of thing; certainly there is a Barbie here or there, but she frequently ends up riding the tractor, etc. 

However.  APPARENTLY the love of things princess is innate within at least some girls, and I APPARENTLY have one of them.  To wit: today at preschool, she imperiously instructed one of the teachers to "make sure to clean that!" after lunch, to which the teacher laughingly saluted and said "yes sir!".  

"I NOT A SIR!  I A PRINCESS!"

.........ok, but in my defense, this is the same child who, at 9 months, had perfected the art of dramatically pointing at things in such a way as to cause us to call her Anna, Autocrat of all the Russias.  AND...I know why she said that to the teacher, it's because I am working hard to make sure she learns to clean up after *herself*, thus I'm sure she hears "make sure to clean [that] up" a lot.  Either that or she's distilling every diva gene she is heir to, and that scares me mightily.

My hands, they might be a bit full with this one. 

PS.  More in my defense.  She says please and thank you consistently and appropriately, and even asks if people are all right unprompted.  I need a drink.

Perfectly ok unless you're applying those values to yourself and your conduct in the public world.  Hm.  Can someone riddle me this? 

Lt. Dan Choi

As I pointed out on my other blog though, maybe it's some weird positive.  He could be shot at before he spoke out, but afterward, no.  So...he stays safe at home, and, you know, still who he is.  Hm.  Do you think the Army of Squicked Out thought about that one? 

There are a number of reasons to love summer, not least of which is it contains my birthday 'n' shit, but one of the top reasons has to be the gloriousness of the fridge after a trip to the market.  The girls and I hit Whole Foods today since the majority of my shopping list was produce (gold STAR for Heather) and I run the risk of a skyrocketing energy bill because opening the fridge to observe our multi-colored bounty is near irresistible.

How can you not be happy with watermelon, red pepper, snow peas, basil in a cup, plums, nectarines?  I even finally bought a basil plant because I was sick of needing it regularly, but not frequently enough to bypass the inevitable sad wilting in the fridge.  The herb garden begins.

When you know a play backward and forward, and yet are *still* clutching your wine glass in agony as Mercutio and Tybalt feint and dance around each other. 

Also - thank god for productions that remember Juliet and Romeo are supposed to be not just teenagers but YOUNG teenagers.  I taught this age group, and let me assure you - this is how they act.  Or, would, if they spoke in such a way as to make themselves coherent to Renaissance audiences.  

I was in the car today taking Ella to riding therapy and INXS' "Never Tear Us Apart" came on.  I, of course, started singing along and cheerfully informed her "THIS came out when Mommy was in JUNIOR HIGH!".

And then I freaked out.  Junior high was twenty years ago.  TWENTY-ONE.  I will be 35 next year for god's sake.  I'm closer to 40 than I am to 20!  When the hell did this happen?  In my head, on a good day, I'm 19. 

Though, it's still a good song, and as my friend Tori from junior high reminded me, all the "IT" couples had it as "their" song that year.  I was not, for the record, part of an "It" couple.

I know, aren't you just so shocked?

Who is coming to this with me?

Great American Food & Music Fest

One of the strangest things about having had a child with disabilities first, and then a typically developing one, is this concept of 'normal'.  When your eldest has the challenges, you quickly learn to adapt your expectations and routines, and that becomes your 'normal'.   My sister-in-law, whose eldest has spina bifida (and is a freshman in university now, which is also sort of surreal, considering I first met him when he was Ella's current age of 7), told me that the stretches of 'normal' would get longer and longer, although occasionally the mainstream aka NORMAL world would intrude and reshuffle everything temporarily.  Which yes, happens.  But you figure out how to cope with that and then you get a big surprise with number two, who does everything by the baby books, more or less on time.  And yet, I am still used to MY normal.  Which does not involve a 28 month old able to discuss putting shoes on to go play on the deck, going to find said shoes, and putting said shoes on...essentially accurately, and completely independently before I even caught on to what she was yammering about.  

Let us not even discuss the frequent Dali-esque conversations we have, within an e.e. cummings-like syntax. 

via The Smoking Gun: Backstage Riders.  I won't be super mean and label which one said what, but let me just note two of my favorite ... typos. 

Verve Clique

H'or Dourves

My day, and my snobbery, is intact. 

Check out these massively fugly, and cloven-hoofed boots.  They make my toes curl up in agony just looking at them.  Also, I think I smell brimstone:

Boots of Hell, and trayfey-ness

And yet, so hilarious.  It may be that I do not quite 'get' football that I find this so funny, but observe and draw your own conclusions:

www.seriouseats.com/2009/01/best--snack-food-stadium-for-your-super-bowl-party.html 

People would shut up about why there was no soaring rhetoric/sound biteable/Kennedy-esque line in President Obama's speech (in passing, it's still surreal to say that without the "elect" part.  Kind of like writing the new year on your checks, I guess).  He gave a somber and pragmatic speech that still referenced plenty of psychological and emotional effluvia. 

Don't we *want* a pragmatic president?  I mean, isn't that what everyone has been bitching about for the last who knows how long?  I thought it was a speech designed for the circumstances, and that right there gives me more hope than anything that he gets it and can adapt to the shifting sands, given that the only constant in life is change.

And goddamn, but wasn't La Franklin's hat incroyable?  No one but she could pull that off, of course, but you know it's going to be attempted. 

That all firefighters, regardless of age, are hot?  And it's not just that 'rescue thing'.  No, seriously, they are physically HOT.  

That California makes weather wimps of us all?  I was talking to a woman at the park today who was totally bundled up and then admitted she was from...wait for it...Siberia.  I am dead serious.  After I picked myself up off the floor, I admitted that I too had grown up in a cold climate (though nothing like SIBERIA'S) and I felt similarly.  She then also admitted they had lived in Wisconsin before coming to California.  I rest my case.

That toddlers can survive surprisingly well on a diet of randomness?  We aim for weekly nutrition, and somehow, inexplicably, it's working, even after two mini tubs of jam and three half-and-half containers at breakfast this morning while I was busy yammering with my friend, whose 15 month old was eating much better.  Actually, to be fair, Anna did eat all her pancakes and I think one chunk of apple.  The masticated peel of which she neatly spit out on her plate.  It was actually sort of impressive.

Many of them, and colleges, and some of them quite well respected in fact.  But the below exchange just made me cackle, not least because I have numerous (well educated, I might add) relatives who probably *wish* the USPS would let you write THE GREAT STATE OF TEXAS.

Land That I Love

In passing, I just have to always bring up the fact that when my dad was teaching at a university in waaaaaaaaay West Texas -  I mean WAY West Texas - our neighbors were armadillos and scorpions West Texas - it was at a place where you could major in Meat Science.  How awesome is that?  In all fairness, this was ranching country, and a lot of the kids who went to Sul Ross State (and yes, that was its real name) were planning to take over the family business at some point, but ... meat science.  Doesn't that just conjure up the best imagery ever?  My father did not, for the record, teach in the Meat Sciences department, but he does appreciate a fine steak. 

Yeehaw. 

Of being able to read what I want, knit every evening after the kids are in bed, if I want, and cook semi-elaborate dinners that can be actually focused on.  To wit, tonight we're having braised short ribs with leftover red cabbage from Xmas (vinegary and gorgeous and pretty much my favorite vegetable ever) and perhaps egg noodles.  I don't make my family eat processed or pre-prepared food during the school year 95% of the time but dinners can be a little, ah, straightforward. 

Semester starts on January 21, and I am actually quite looking forward to it, as one of the classes is on general management of libraries and information centers.  My hope is that after this I might have a better sense of whether or not this is the track I truly want to take (though I'm already pretty certain); it is also being taught by a co-worker of my best friend's (convoluted story but he is actually in IT at a local university although has a MLIS, etc.  Long story), who, when asked by said best friend what it would take to get an A, said "burritos from La Victoria".  Well, I can do that.  Though I may not need to, given that I am now holding a 4.0 for my first semester.  Yeah, ok, bragging off.  But seriously, I was so thrilled about the solid A on the paper that I worked so effing hard on, that I think a little banner waving is ok.  The other class, well, I'm not entirely sure the professor actually read everything I did, because I got full marks on EVERYTHING we submitted, except for participation (and even that was a 13/15) on the discussion forums.  Ah well, it's a good start to the degree gittin'.  

But for now, delicious dinners and perhaps a slightly cleaner and more organized house.  And knitting.  Because Mama is a yarn ho. 

In reading those Twilight books, but I do cringe and snicker with embarrassment at the twelve year old me who would have devoured them (yes yes, pun intended.  It's pre-coffee, y'all), this from Cracked was hilarious, and way, way too accurate:

If 'Twilight' Was 10 Times Shorter and 100 Times More Honest

Man, I hate shit like this.  And yet, of course I read it, and I fully expect to endure my daughters, or at least one of them, being into something similar eventually - maybe it's a rite of passage. 

Plus I'm sick, which makes me extra gritchy.  Bah!  Vampires!  I spit garlic at you.