Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: October 2009
Kitty!
This one is probably old news to many of you, but I saw it for the first time today. (They were making a point about bonding between doctors and their patients. I wonder, who is the lion?)
Christian the lion reunites with his owners . . .
D.
A kaleidoscope of years
What I always forget about the LA basin is its scale. If I drive 20 minutes in Bakersfield, I get from one side of town to the other. If I drive 20 minutes in LA, I get from one suburb to another. On the map, they’re next door neighbors.
We knew our neighbors when we were kids. We knew everyone on the street. We knew their occupations, the names of all their kids; they had nicknames; each dad had a characteristic whistle to call his kids home for dinner. We even knew whose dad was pissed (the whistle changed pitch). The adults weren’t friends with one another but we knew them. And the kids hung out together, of course. Nowadays, I don’t know my neighbors. Yes, I’m as much to blame as they are. It was a little better in Crescent City and Harbor, but not much.
In Texas, we knew our next door neighbors. We met the wife when Sydney, my tortoise, dug under the fence to see if there were any female tortoises in their backyard. The wife liked to feed the deer; huge scads of deer came by for the free food, the parasites. The husband was an emeritus prof at the med school, in the Family Practice Department. Nice people. But we didn’t know anyone else there.
So I had in mind eating at Cafe Santorini tonight, since I have fond memories of their smelt appetizer — my “pile of little fishies,” as in, “Karen, I want a pile of little fishies tonight!” I was so eager to get there that I took the Colorado exit from the 210. Big mistake. I should have stayed on the 134. Not only did the 210 exit put me in the wrong place, it pointed me in the wrong direction. It has been so long since I lived in LA that everything looks unfamiliar now. The fact that I passed first the Eagle Rock Plaza and then the Glendale Galleria should have told me I was going the wrong way, but finally I had to come to a dead-end to figure it out. Fortunately, I found the 134 East, got myself turned around, and soon found myself in Old Town Pasadena. Huzzah!
Old Town Pasadena is a product of end stage gentrification. In my childhood, Colorado Blvd. was a string of seedy bars and pawn shops. You wouldn’t stop there, you would drive through. Fast. In the 90s, it went through a lovely in-between phase where pawn shops and adult bookstores intermingled with Il Fornaio and Gordon Biersch. Now Gordon Biersch lies vacant, and what was once a stodgy and ancient cigar-and-top hat restaurant on the corner of Fair Oaks and Colorado is now a Cheesecake Factory. Abercrombie and Fitch, Barnes and Noble, T-Mobile, an Apple store, Victoria’s Secret . . . I want to know who gutted a mall! I might as well be back in Walnut Creek.
But Cafe Santorini is still open, and my little fishies are still on the menu.
“I can’t tell you how happy I am that you’re still open,” I told the hostess.
“Oh, we stay open until 10 on weekdays!” she bubbled back. I suspect she was 10 the last time we ate here.
Overheard at Cafe Santorini: one twenty-something woman telling another, “I feel settled now.” I didn’t catch the details, but she proceeded to tell her friend how everything in her life had fallen into place. And maybe she is settled. Maybe she’ll still be in the same place, doing the same thing sixty years from now. But it struck me that it’s far more likely that she’s settled only because she has not yet become unsettled.
I was settled once, too. I had free food and rent, a girlfriend, a job that paid me enough for gas and date money, a certain amount of homework to keep my mind busy. Then I left home for college, and since then nothing has been the same.
It seems to me we live many lives, each in blocks of ten or five years, sometimes less. Certainly my first ten years felt like an eternity, and the next ten weren’t much better. Berkeley was only four years, yet it was and is a huge part of my life. Texas? Little more than two, but it made a big impression on me.
What fascinates me is the selectivity of memory. I’ve spent something like 40% of my life living in the San Gabriel Valley, yet I got lost trying to get to Old Town Pasadena. But once there, I walked straight to Cafe Santorini (which is a bit out of the way), and the place looked and felt like I had been there only a few months ago.
And my little fishies were just as tasty as I had remembered.
D.
Hectic stew
Things be jumping in the next few days. I’m in the OR tomorrow, bunch of middlin’ cases, then it’s down to LA for Part II of Kize College. I spend Wednesday night in Pasadena, Thursday listening to speakers, back here Thursday night. Friday morning, I’m doing a big case in the OR, then patients in the afternoon. Busy, busy week.
So I’m trying to figure out different things to do with beef stew. Aside from the usual mushrooms, celery, onions, bell pepper, and garlic (and red wine, tomato sauce, bay leaves, etc.), what can I do to make the whole thing jump? I suppose I could google it and look for variant recipes. I make a good beef stew (or so I’m told — I can’t sample it, thanks to my vile beef allergy), but I suspect it’s the same old same old.
D.
Pineapple crisp
Jake’s fourteen today!
For his fourteenth birthday, I made him his favorite food, focaccia, as well as candied yams and hickory-smoked pork baby back ribs. For dessert, he wanted one of my rhubarb crisps, but there was no rhubarb to be found. Instead, I made a pineapple crisp.
You can find the basic recipe here at allrecipes.com. Since I’ve made a number of changes, though, I’m going to repeat the recipe below.
* about 3 cups chopped fresh pineapple, cut into 1/2-inch (1 cm) chunks
* 1 apple, cut into similar-sized chunks
* 1 cup all-purpose flour
* 1 cup plus two tablespoons brown sugar
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 egg
* 1/2 cup butter, melted
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Fearing a soupy crisp (which is what you’ll see at the allrecipes.com site), I stirred the pineapple with two tablespoons of brown sugar, then let the pineapple drain in a pasta strainer for about five minutes. Meanwhile, I preheated the oven to 275 F. I spread the pineapple onto a nonstick cookie sheet and let it dehydrate and caramelize a little at 275 F for about 1 1/4 hours.
I spread these chunks on the bottom of an 8-inch square pyrex dish. There was surprisingly little pineapple at this point, so if you’re a pineapple purist, you can probably skip the apple and simply start out with more pineapple, perhaps five cups. But this recipe came out so well, I’m going to push on and tell you how I did it.
Raise the oven temperature to 350 F.
I peeled and diced an apple and sprinkled the chunks over the pineapple. I figured this would add a little moisture, now that I had done such a great job sucking all the water out of my pineapple.
Combine all dry ingredients except for the cinnamon, then stir the egg and half the butter into the dry ingredients. I used a pastry cutter to create a slightly chunky mixture. Spread this mixture over the fruit, then drizzle the remaining butter over everything. Sprinkle cinnamon evenly over the crisp.
Bake at 350 F for 45 min, cool on a rack, and serve with vanilla ice cream.
Amazing stuff. Yes, it’s a bit of a hassle to prep your pineapple like this, but if you like that caramelized pineapple flavor, there’s no other alternative.
Jake never wants much for his birthday. For his fourteenth, he asked for a bowler hat and a book, Predictably Irrational. I bought him Osmos, which I blogged the other day, and I think I might buy him Machinarium, too, since the graphics are amazing.
Oh, how I love indie games . . .
D.
Who you callin’ a misguided mediocrity?
From Huffington Post (thanks, Chris):
Where could Doug Hoffman turn?
To a traveling freak show of evil creeps who want to use a misguided mediocrity to jerk around the people of upstate New York for shits and giggles.
So how do you tell me apart from Conservative Party congressional candidate Doug Hoffman? Watch:
It’s easy. He has better teeth, and I don’t go to bed with Michelle Malkin.
D.
Here’s a new 419 scam!
New spin on an old fraud:
Dear Friend,
I am Mrs. Elizabeth Etters from Iceland, married to Late Engr Brown Etters {PhD} who worked with MULTINATIONAL OIL COMPANY EXXON AS A DRILLING RIG SUPPLIER in Kuwait for 19 years before he died on the 22th August 2008. We were married for twenty four years without a child. He died after a brief illness that lasted for only four days.Before his death, he deposited the sum of USD 2,142,728.00 Dollars with a bank In Canada and this fund is presently with the bank awaiting my disbursement as beneficiary and next of kin to the funds. Recently, my Doctor told me that I would not last for the next Eight months due to cancer problem. Having known my condition I decided to donate this fund to a church, organization or good person that will utilize this money in good faith.
I took this decision because I don’t have any child that will inherit this money. I kept this deposit secret till date, this is why I am taking this decision. I don’t think i will need any telephone communication in this regard because of the confidentiality of this transfer.Upon your reply I shall give you the contact of the bank. I will also issue a letter of authorization to the bank that will prove you the present beneficiary of this money. Reply to my very confidential email address below {lizzy.etters@live.com} as I am sending this from a friend’s email.
Await your responds and God bless you.
Mrs. Elizabeth Etters
Email: lizzy.etters@live.com
Waddya think, should I take the money? She is a “dear friend,” after all.
D.
Aftermath of the project & a new game
The kids had to do two-minute presentations on their projects. As I predicted, some of the kids had scrapbookers in the family. There were some interesting developments, though; one student constructed all of his pages on paper plates, and another took the Maximal Ingratiation approach, tailoring all of his answers to please the teacher. For, “If I could do something to make the world a better place . . .” he wrote, “I would make our Theology teacher President of the United States.” Or words to that effect.
Kinda undermines the introspective point of the assignment, but I give him props for good humor intuition: he had his class in stitches during his presentation.
Jake thinks his project had the only pop-up (and certainly the only pop-up Colbert). Go pop-ups!
In other news: got a great premise for an SF novel, or at least a short story. I’m pretty sure this hasn’t been done yet. But it’s just a premise (and a few features of the main character) but no story. It’s one of those “thaw out a frozen 21st Century guy in an unusual future” premises, and the unusual future is the kicker, of course. I have a good idea what the first two or three chapters would look like, but after that, I have no idea. Should I trust in the muse? It worked for my romance, but that’s romance. Everyone knows how that’s supposed to end.
New game: Osmos. You control this entity which looks a bit like a moon jellyfish; you propel yourself by farting out bits of your mass opposite to your direction of movement. Encounter something smaller than yourself and you absorb it, gaining mass; run into something bigger than yourself, and you lose mass (or die altogether if you don’t move real fast). Starts simple, rapidly becomes wicked hard.
Osmos is an indie game, downloadable for the low low price of ten dollars. In recent years, some of our best gaming experiences have been with indie games. I’ve previously blogged World of Goo, but I should have mentioned Braid, too. Neat stuff. And sooo addictive.
D.
The project
I’ve been absent the past few days because Jake had a MAJOR PROJECT! for Theology. As in, THIS WILL BE A HUUUUGE PART OF YOUR GRADE so you had better not turn in crap. The task: answer ten rather personal questions and illustrate your answers. The questions ranged from, “Something that really irritates me is . . .” and “The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is . . .” to “An experience which brought me closer to God is . . .” For the last question, my little atheist was allowed to explain why he was an atheist. He designed a page with planets and a teapot, and included the infamous Russell’s Teapot quote. I’m sure this will endear him to his Theology teacher.
We went a little crazy with the project, including some origami, a pop-up of Stephen Colbert at his desk (“Something that makes me laugh is . . .”), and working toothed gears (don’t ask). But I figure Jake is competing against kids whose mothers are scrapbookers. Hey, if I could have gotten my sister the rubber stamp fanatic involved, Jake’s project would have been amazing. And creativity is half the grade.
The name of the game is introspection, I suppose, and one question which gave him fits was, “When I’m older, I want to be . . .” Thing is, Jake doesn’t know what he wants to be, so I asked him to think about what he wants from himself as an adult. I asked him, “What would you need from yourself and from life to not feel disappointed?” I think it’s an important question. I wish someone had asked me that question. Not that I’m disappointed, but thinking about it might have saved me a few missteps along the way.
I don’t think he liked my question. Instead, he listed some of the features of what he would consider a good career: primarily, well paying and adequate free time. I’m not sure he realizes yet the importance of intellectual stimulation; perhaps he figures that’s what free time is for. But I don’t care how much free time you have — if your 8 hours on the job is mind-numbingly repetitive, you’re not going to be happy.
So, yes, he listed SOME of the features of a good job. We couldn’t figure out how to illustrate, “Cannot be outsourced.”
D.
The bump
Late Tuesday night, we found out that Jake would have a PE test on Friday: he would have to bump pass a volleyball back to his teacher five times at a distance of 12 feet.
This left us with two days to practice.
Not Jake's PE teacher.
We bought a volleyball Wednesday afternoon, went to the park, and started working on it. We had a frisbee, too (Jake’s next activity for PE), so when we tired of volleyball, we tossed the frisbee around.
We tired of it . . . um . . . often.
A shortage of killing power
The sporting goods store was all out of hollow points.
There was a run on ammo at the beginning of the year, back when righteous NRA-lovin’ gun-totin’ Americans convinced themselves that Barack Obama would soon reinstitute bans on assault weapons and do God knows what else to restrict their Second Amendment rights. But the Obama Admin hasn’t done squat to please the Left’s gun control wing, and in fact, it is now possible to pack heat into our national parks.
Despite this, Americans continue to stockpile ammo. Per this Canadian Broadcasting Company article, “According to the National Rifle Association in the U.S., Americans buy about seven billion rounds of ammunition annually. But by September this year, they had purchased nine billion rounds.” As a result, Canadian hunters are having a harder time buying bullets.
The annoying thing about this? All we want is a few rounds of hollow points. Hollow points are great for home defense because they have great stopping power and they don’t penetrate walls. Safety first!
So to all you right wing nut jobs hoarding ammunition: Dammit, start sharing. Us lefties are sick and tired of settling for normal rounds.
D.