Things I've noticed today

I finally found a place to drop off my recycling! I hate that I've wanted to recycle for ages, yet couldn't find anywhere to accept it. Geesh, I even save kitchen scraps for composting, yet couldn't recycle a freakin glass bottle. Anyway, there's a place at the CRC with dumpster bins for recyclables. I'm going to make it a regular stop on the way to work from now on. Hooray!

It's far more fun to bellydance with other people than alone. Especially if you're dancing together and not just practicing the same moves at the same time. My excitement over dancing goes up exponentially in a group, which is why I *still* haven't really worked at home on my solo that's coming up in like 3 weeks.

I'd like to give my dog a snack without her engulfing my hand up to the second knuckles. No matter what I'm holding or how gingerly I drop it, there I am with sopping fingertips afterwards. But I can hold a small treat in my mouth and she'll ever so gently take it without touching my face, except her whiskers. Windy has a massive cat-like set of whiskers, we call them her sensor array.

If your boss demands a minimum business casual dress code, he shouldn't get upset when women wear heels that make noise when we walk. It's not our fault he paved the hallways with bricks, or built the front room to acoustically amplify the smallest sound. And we're super not allowed to wear shoes that scuff the blazing white floors, which most women's flats will do. So, scuffy shoes are out, heels are discouraged (he refers to them as noisy shoes), no clogs, no open heel or open toe shoes of any kind. What pray tell do you wear with a skirt or nice pair of trousers?

Do you think there's something in the air? Almost everyone I know either feels bad physically or mentally. We're all stressed, tired, overworked, overwhelmed, irritable, worried, grumpy. Isn't there a spring wind that brings bad vibes called the foehn? I don't know if what we have going counts, but it could explain a lot.

Tonight's the night

Tonight is the first official night of "Man this would be a great night to be out camping" season. It's in the upper 50s, calm and clear. I stepped outside after dark and could imagine sitting around a fire, drinking Guinness out of a tin cup, no idea what time it is and not caring. Laughing over the inevitable fire-starting competition we always seem to have (it requires drinking a beer before picking up the flint & steel) and my obsessive fire-tending throughout the night. Reminiscing over prior events and people, plans for trade items like leatherworking and handspinning, and the occasional non-PC topics like genetics and wastewater treatment. Trying to bring the youngin' of our group, a quiet fun 14 year old, up to snuff on certain matters ;)

I can't wait. I'm smiling even thinking about it.

Bacon Chocolate

"Applewood smoked bacon, Alder wood smoked salt, 41% cacao". No, not just bacon flavored--actual chips of bacon in the chocolate. Kind of unnerving to see pork listed in the ingredients for a candy bar.

The other one is hickory smoked almonds and grey sea salt. The hickory smoking definitely adds an unusual taste.

Both quite weird but not bad. It would be fun attend a chocolate tasting at Vosges, they have some really odd selections on their website (as if bacon isn't odd enough).
Nothing like Bacon & Chocolate to say I love you on Valentine's Day.

Blown away

Literally. The wind was crazy yesterday -- gusts past 50mph here, up to 70mph where the fires are still burning. I looked out our back door this morning and noticed the deck looked a little cluttered. With a tree. It wasn't possible to fit all of the tree in the photo, but this gives an idea. I think it would have scared the crap out of us if we'd been here when it fell. It didn't cause any damage to the house or deck, but our bikes are under the branches right now. I looked at the tree still standing, and there's another good size chunk that looks primed to fall in the next bad storm.

It's kind of fun right now. The branches form a shelter of sorts, it's like sitting in a green cave. I'm not sure what to do with it once we get it off the deck. Maybe it's time to get a chainsaw.

Brush Fire Detour

We were trudging home after our visit to NoVA to see my parents. It was a fun visit, we were just tired and wanting to be home. The wind was buffeting the car and making the trip interminable. We finally were within an hour of home, admiring the fiery sunset and purple mountains up ahead. Then we realized it was widespread smoke making the landscape so pretty from the distance. A bit later we could smell the woodsmoke and saw a sign warning the interstate was closed due to brush fires. We hopped off at the next exit and descended into the valley hazy with smoke. It took a bit of effort and a frantic Chinese Fire Drill at a stoplight, but we eventually made it on back roads to D.'s mom's house. We're hanging out here for the time being, waiting for news of the roads reopening.

It was tasty, but...

What the hell did I eat? D. and I went to dinner with my brother and his wife at a Chinese restaurant (Oriental Regency, Vienna, VA). We figured it was a good sign that most of the patrons were Chinese and most of the dishes unrecognizable. They had standbys like steamed dumplings and sweet&sour chicken, but we had a laugh over some of the more exotic items like fish head casserole, Maw with rape, duck blood soup. I wanted something unusual and was set to order the baby eels with white leeks, given my love of unagi maki, until my brother told me to ask if they were freshwater or saltwater eels. Good point! The waitress seemed tickled I wanted to order eel but I changed my mind when she said they were saltwater. I ordered "bean curd layers with cabbage" expecting a lasagna-like dish of tofu slices and bok choy in sauce.

The dish they put in front of me looked like a pile of skin grafts with edamame. I really thought it must be the wrong item, but figured I'd give it a try. Long strips about 1.5" wide of thin pale crumpled flimsy stuff, much more resilient than a noodle. If you tugged on a strip it was elasticy and had a subtle mesh impression on it. Definitely skin grafts. We decided it wasn't animal-based after I ate some. No one else would try it, not even my brother who was extolling the list of weird foods he's eaten. I gave up trying to figure out what it was and just enjoyed eating it, although part of me really wanted to know. Towards the end I remembered another menu item called 'bean curd skins' and realized the layers in my dish must be the same thing. Well, I wanted something unusual and eating a dish no one could identify definitely counts. I might have to buy some at Oasis for lunch sometime.

Disillusion and Dissolution

What? Two political-based entries in a row? From someone with the political efficacy of a 1950s housefrau? I really need to eat more hummus, maybe it'll keep me from watching the news. I did make tuna salad using hummus instead of mayo and it was really tasty. Ok, back to the point --

We had MSNBC on most of the evening watching Super Tuesday. I never would have been interested if D. didn't talk about it so much, rather like watching the State of the Union last week. It was interesting to watch, although frustrating how they jumped to conclusions so quickly. For instance, they said someone was the projected winner in a state, but when you read the graphic only 4% of that state's votes had been tallied. So why was there a big freakin check mark next to someone's name when 96% of the vote had yet to be counted? I don't think 4% is statistically significant, but then I'm not a professional statistician. Still, I know enough not to use the word "significant" unless it has some numbers to back it up.

I sat on the couch knitting, which I think will be a mandatory activity for all political events from now on. D. was down the hall tearing up his guitar. It was like an hour long live Black Sabbath concert -- all the hits from NIB to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath to Dirty Women (a personal favorite). He was playing his Gibson '61 Reissue through a Fender amp, and the sound was indistinguishable from their album. He plays all the time so I tend not to notice it, but I really sat back and listened to him, and realized how cool it is and how lucky I am to have someone like to listen to.

One of the pundits made a point that we're seeing a diss-a-loo-shun of racial voting. I wonder if he mean disillusion or dissolution. Either way the point is still the same, but I really wonder which one he meant, and if he realized his homophone problem. I've never voted in a Primary before. Hell, I've gone to vote and skipped the presidential election section in the past. So I'm shocked that I'm planning on voting in the upcoming primary next week. Not that it'll matter in the general election, but maybe I can help influence the party nomination in my own small way. I figure, if we can keep Walmart out of B'burg, we can keep certain people out of the Whitehouse.