I just did a big batch of pasty dough. I’ve done Cornish Pasties before, but I was doing a large batch to evaluate some dessert pasties, which requires more than just 4 called for in the recipe.
My forearms ache, because you need to work the dough, which is made with bread flour, which is stiff.
On the bright side, we did some cheese and veggie pasties for dinner from the excess dough.
The remaining dough is in the fridge, and I will be doing apple and various berry fillings.
It’s complicated.
It involves theater people, and I can certify that there were no ocular injuries sustained in the process of obtaining the picture.
Off to collect my daughter from AADA in Manhattan for the end of the school year.
I will return on Sunday, and I have some stuff queued up.
It was “The Trouble with Tribbles.”
He enjoyed it immensely.
We are now going to watch Deadpool on PPV.
Charlie shared a quote he saw on the internet.
He thought that it was brilliant, but he had no clue where it came from:
CB: You see, Baldrick, in order to prevent war two great super-armies developed. Us, the Russians and the French on one side, Germany and Austro-Hungary on the other. The idea being that each army would act as the other’s deterrent. That way, there could never be a war.
PB: Except, this is sort of a war, isn’t it?
CB: That’s right. There was one tiny flaw in the plan.
LG: O, what was that?
CB: It was bollocks.
I agreed that it was brilliant, and it seemed a bit fmailiar.
I asked it what it was from, and he looked down said, “Something called Blackadder?”
My kids have never seen any of the Blackadder series.
I have failed as a parent.
We are going to an Italian restaurant.
They brought us a basket of bread with sliced garlic oil to dip the bread in.
I have died and gone to Chomaytz heaven.
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We are frantically preparing for Pesach, which, ironically enough feels like a long slog through the desert.
Tomorrow is the first Seder.
So I am kind of busy.
I picked up Natalie from visiting her boy friend Ryan.
He was wearing a tank top, and I noticed that, much like me, he was a seriously hairy dude.
I described him as, “A Wookie.”
He entered college majoring engineering, though he is switching to music production.
While we were driving home, we discussed his music, and I discovered that, for a while at least, he played the trombone.
Hairy, engineer, trombone player.
That describes her dad as well.
My mind was completely blown.
Natalie was unamused.
Charlie, who was in the car with us, laughed so hard he nearly wet himself.
I was watching an oldies TV station, MeTV, and Star Trek came on, the original, 1st season, “Operation — Annihilate!”.
I realized that Charlie had never seen an episode, so I called him down to watch.
He went up to get his glasses during an ad break, and he never came back down.
16 year olds are tough to teach anything.
At some point during Lansdowne’s production of Little Shop of Horrors, Sharon lost her keys.
That was Saturday night.
She remembered putting them in her coat pocket, but somehow they had fallen out.
For the past 2-1/2 days, she has been frantically retracing her steps, and tearing apart the house and the car in an attempt to find her keys.
She found them today.
They were in her coat pocket.
It appears that she had put them in her zipper pocket so that they would be safer, and then she forgot that she had done so.
This is a fail on par with marrying me.
He played Seymour Krelborn.
He did a very good job, and his portrayal was remarkably dark, at least as compared to my recollections of the original Broadway show that I saw many decades ago.
He mentioned to me that he was channeling his middle school experiences, and I saw that.
He and Natalie clearly got their singing voices from my mom, because neither my wife or I can carry a tune.
Too much snow for igloo making.
It took an hour and a half to shovela path to the front yard, where we intend to start construction.
And it is still snowing hard.
Great googly moogly!
Now that we finally have a heavy snow storm, Charlie and I are going to attempt to make an igloo tomorrow.
It should be interesting.
I expect a glorious fiasco.
We’ll use our Tupperware to make the bricks.
It’s been near the single digits in the morning and evening lately, and so the walk to and from the Metro station to work is less pleasant, so I need to cover my head.
I turned to the family expert on all things hat related, my daughter.
I sent her the following text:
Since you are the expert, I need advice.
It’s getting cold, and I need a hat to keep warm.
Clearly it must also be silly, because ……… Dad.
Suggestions?
So, now I throw this out to the internet: Hat, must be warm and thoroughly silly.
Photographs appreciated.
The resemblance is striking
It appears that you closely resemble a scientific reconstruction of the appearance of Jesus.
You are a bit paler, but summers in Seattle would do that to you.
Perhaps you should consider a career as a false messiah.
As L. Ron Hubbard once said, “If you want to get rich, you start a religion.”
Charlie, my son, and section leaders for the percussion section, was practicing in band for this Thursday’s concert.
He was playing the bongos, and there was an incident.
I got the following texts:
I pulled a Pete Townshend.
………
I was playing the bongo part when I looked down and saw pink on one of the heads. I played too hard and the skin came off one of my knuckles.
I replied:
Thank God you didn’t pull a Keith Moon.
We would have to pay to rebuild the f%$#ing stage.
No worries, ‘Tis but a scratch.
He’s still good for the concert.
My brother, AKA the Bear Who Swims, is fond of winter.
In fact, my brother has frequently expressed a sense of loss at not experiencing Minneapolis weather now that he lives in Seattle.
Well, Bear Who Swims, have you considered Norway?
Residents of Norway view their long dark winters as something to celebrate. How it’s possible to be cheerful for the next four months.
As the days get darker and colder in much of the northern hemisphere, it’s easy to indulge in gloom. For the next few months, you’ll be shivering. You’ll be battling foul weather. Thanks to daylight saving time there will be no chance to see the sun after work.
The gloom leads to a common question: What can I do to cope with the dark and cold?
If you truly want to be happy during winter, though, this is the wrong approach to the season. Changing your mindset can do more than distracting yourself from the weather.
That’s the takeaway from research done by Kari Leibowitz, currently a PhD student at Stanford University, who spent August 2014 to June 2015 on a Fulbright scholarship in Tromsø in northern Norway. Tromsø is so far north that from late November to late January, the sun never climbs above the horizon. Leibowitz went to study the residents’ overall mental health, because rates of seasonal depression were lower than one might expect.
………
It turns out that in northern Norway, “people view winter as something to be enjoyed, not something to be endured,” says Leibowitz, and that makes all the difference.
………
And finally, people are enamored with the sheer beauty of the season. Leibowitz grew up near the Jersey shore, and “I just took it as a fact that everyone likes summer the best.” But deep in the winter in Norway, when the sun doesn’t rise above the horizon, multiple hours a day can still look like sunrise and sunset, and against the snow, “the colors are incredibly beautiful,” she says. “The light is very soft and indirect.”
I rather imagine that as he reads this, my brother is thinking wistfully of the thought of sub-zero evenings and the Northern Lights.
*Actually, to be fair, Stephen has never expressed an interest in moving to Norway, I just think that he might now.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
I am at a “Rubiks” cubing competition with my son, and this time, for the first time, Sharon* is with us.
She made the comment that she felt like she was in a room of people like Charlie.
I replied, “You mean virgins?”
When I informed Charlie of my bon mot, we was unamused.
(on edit) This was the River Hill Fall 2015 cubing competition, and the world record for solving a 3×3 cube was broken ……… twice, with the final record breaking the 5 second barrier.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.