Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Pix
Self-taught
Several times a day, complete strangers criticize me for something I can’t help. If I conformed to their idea of “normal” behavior, I would be in pain for most of my work day. Not right away, perhaps, but after an hour or two? You betcha.
Here’s a sampling of the remarks I hear all the time.
Did you injure yourself?
You look like a caveman.
If you had gone to my grade school, the nuns would have murdered you.
I bet you’d be a better surgeon if you [did it the right way].
and the most common question,
Who taught you how to do that?
To which I reply in my most obnoxious voice, challenging the questioner to give me even an ounce more of their shit: I’m self-taught.
Follow me below the cut to see WTF they’re griping about.
About the new frogs
I may be a thief, but I’m not a dick. UC Berkeley News credits this great photo to Prof. Miguel Vences. It was used to illustrate their story, “Clutch piracy revealed as novel mating strategy in European Common Frog,” which is every bit as captivating as it sounds. Don’t believe me? Snip:
In high-altitude ponds in the Pyrenees, on the border between Spain and France, so many males are vying for fatherhood that they pirate the egg clutches after they’re laid. Grasping them as they would a female, they release sperm in the floating clutches, often successfully fertilizing the eggs left unfertilized after the initial encounter. In one pond studied, 84 percent of all clutches had been fertilized by more than one male.
Ejaculating right on top of a clutch of eggs. It doesn’t get much more Darwinian than that.
I’d like to change the blog’s subtitle, too*, but I’m feeling post-fast-food queasy and can’t figure out which template to modify. Maybe tomorrow.
D.
*For example, I could paraphrase Bette Davis: “Hang on, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
One outa four ain’t bad
We took off a four-day weekend for Easter — my employees’ idea, which I supposedly approved — and I’d had great hopes of finishing my romance, but it was not to be. Not that it was a wasted weekend. On Friday, I dashed off nearly 3000 words on a weird little erotica short story. Great, thought I, I’ve broken the block! Yet I still kept gagging on the manuscript.
A few months ago, I threw away the last quarter of the novel and started afresh. Today, I reread the newer material, and I’m happy with it. The big sex scene may be a little too kinky for some of my beta readers but I’ll bet I’m underestimating y’all. And now none of my characters are behaving with extraordinary stupidity. No dumbass misunderstandings, no improbable emotions. I think I see the way forward.
And I probably could have written more than five hundred words today, too, except this was the first sunny day of the last four, and the boy and I were stir crazy. Hard to resist this:
Losing the war on drugs one cat at a time
It’s getting ugly at Chez Walnut.
And here’s the I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? version:
Blissed
This is Charlotte, our ferret. We used to have two, but her sister Emily escaped one day and never showed her twitchy nose again. My fault, unfortunately. I’ve never been good at multiprocessing, and one day, I tried simultaneously to give the ferrets some exercise and clean house. Emily slipped out, but the smarter and nicer Bronte remained.
I would love to think that Emily is sipping mojitos with other expatriate ferrets, chatting about the irresistible cache of stray socks and the unbearable yumminess of human toes, but alas, ferrets can’t exist without humans. Ours would only eat one brand of kitten chow and never, ever showed interest in other offerings. If Emily were dying of thirst and found a puddle of water, I doubt she would know what to do with it.
Not to mention the sad fact that something — a dog, perhaps — picked off the cats in that neighborhood. A ferret would be no match.
Charlotte doesn’t miss her sister. Emily was nasty to everyone, her sister included, and Charlotte’s personality improved greatly following Emily’s disappearance. We keep Charlotte up in our master bedroom so that she’ll feel part of the family. Kind of a bitch when she musks, but it’s worth it to keep her happy.
Short blog tonight — I want to start working on my Thirteen. Happy Hump Day!
D.
Cherry blossoms: three views
The Japanese lurve their cherry trees, not so much for the fruit as for the blossoms. Perhaps, as this site suggests, the “cherry blossom front” marching across Japan captures the national interest because it symbolizes the coming of Spring. But this is too simplistic. Cherry blossoms had symbolic mojo for the samurai:
The cherry blossom was considered an especially beautiful and important symbol for Japanese samurai because at the height of its beauty it would inevitably fall to the ground to die. Samurai also had to be willing to sacrifice themselves in their prime, and the cherry blossom was evidence that this is the natural way of things and could even be beautiful and pure.
. . . and cherry blossoms have a Zen symbolic value as well. This site quotes from Robert Aitken’s A Zen Wave:
Here’s what Aitken tells us about the importance of the cherry blossoms to Japanese life.
[page 131] Instilled in the Japanese mind is the association of the ephemerality of the cherry blossoms with the brevity of human life. Blooming for so short a time, and then casting loose in a shower of lovely petals in the early April wind, cherry blossoms symbolize an attitude of nonattachment much admired in Japanese culture.
Compare this attitude with the Western attitude of the pretty cherry blossoms presaging the appearance of the real purpose of the cherry tree: cherries.
Below the cut: three views of the cherry blossoms in my front yard.
Work, part III
I’m between cases right now. I’ll update this throughout the day, time permitting. (Updated x 3, pic added.)
***
I’m asking myself whether grad school was work or not. For all I produced in the lab, I might as well have been making widgets. But even that’s a bad analogy, because whatever widgets are, someone must need them or else widget factories wouldn’t make them, right? Or do widgets exist solely to provide examples for intro economics textbooks?
Hundreds of hours in the lab for nothing. For “results” that didn’t advance the forefront of science a single micron. What a waste! But at least I earned tuition credits, made a few good friends, and could pretend, at least for a little while, that I was a scientist.
Southern Oregon Coast I
On those days when I get to do cases in Gold Beach, I’m unequivocally happy with my profession. It’s a beautiful drive (photos below), made better by the driver’s tendency to blare Gogol Bordello at cochlea-splitting volume. Gold Beach is a lovely little coastal city with a top notch new/used bookstore. The hospital staff always make me feel welcome, and they take great care of my patients. So — what’s not to love?
I ran out of memory on my camera, unfortunately, and missed what would have been a heartwarming photo op. As I passed through Brookings on my way home, there were two competing political demonstrations: an anti-war group on one corner, and a collection of flag-waving “support our troops” characters on the opposite corner. The anti-war group had the flag-wavers outnumbered 10:1. Yay! And this is one of the more Republican areas of Oregon.
Below the fold: what I did to day, in pictures.
The Carbo King
I made beignets yesterday from this recipe.
Big, big hit with Wife and Boy. I rolled the dough out to one-quarter inch thickness, which yielded a hefty beignet. This was great for Jake since he liked the insides better than the crust; Karen would have preferred a less doughy beignet, so next time, I’ll roll some of the dough out to one-eighth inch for her. Jake preferred them without any sweetener at all. I liked them best with honey (the ones on the bottom of the pic — although you can hardly see the honey).
The recipe can easily make 40 – 60 beignets, depending on how thin you roll out the dough and how small you cut your squares. I divided the dough into four balls and froze three of them.
Key point: the oil has to be at the right temperature, 360F, so invest in a candy thermometer. And by the way, this dough would be terrific for pierogis.
How about the New York Times No-Knead Bread? Not nice-looking enough to take pictures of, I’m afraid, but the flavor and texture were great. I’m wondering what I did wrong. Perhaps, as Spocko suggested, I should have used fresh yeast. And maybe the fact I let it go 24 hours was a problem — the dough lacked oomph for that last rise. Still, the results were promising, and I intend to revisit No-Knead Bread sometime soon.
We had the bread with oxtail stew. I don’t think I’ve ever given you my oxtail stew recipe, so I’ll do that, too, sometime soon.
D.
Oy! So young!
Who says cleaning the garage is a thankless task? It’s only 99% thankless. Yesterday, I found a cache of old photos, including a little packet of wallet photos, much the worse for wear. Here’s the gem, from our first year of marriage, circa 1984:
I’m holding Baby, a Columbian red-tailed boa constrictor, and Karen’s holding Red Sonja, a corn snake. But jeez! That hanging sunset thingie in the background, I’d had that since senior year of high school. And I’m wearing a Garfield shirt (where did that come from?) and I have hair! And Karen, oy, she looks so sweet in her Berkeley College of Chemistry shirt.
I tried to find a better copy of this photo, but this was the best I could manage: