leftovers.

Some people don't like leftovers. Maybe they like variety or maybe there is a stigma attached to leftovers. I don't know what it is, because I am not one of those people. That's very lucky for me, because I am the chef in a household of two. There are very few recipes out there meant to be made for two people. I could scale larger recipes down, but then I'd have to cook dinner every single night. That's an awful lot of work to feed two measly people.

Josh is not wild about leftovers, unless they're made with chocolate. But he's a very polite and gracious person, so I didn't even know that he didn't much care for leftovers until a week or two ago. He had managed to keep that from me in the couple of years that I've been putting dinners, some fresh and some reheated, in front of him. What's really sweet is that he admitted it was a struggle for him. He has a aversion to them, but he is working through it because he knows that a lot of people don't have any food, much less food made lovingly by a woman in a Tootsie Roll apron. It's comforting to see others struggling to be better people. I'd hate to feel like the only one.

Perhaps my efforts at Good Person-hood have been in vain, because I don't feel all that bad for making him eat leftovers. After all, I eat more of them. Every day for lunch, I'm eating something that I made for dinner earlier in the week. And then I'll eat it again that night. Leftovers just don't bother me that much. Then again, I have the chef's privilege of choosing what to make. When I decide what to make for dinner one night, I've already decided that I would be okay eating that same thing for the next couple of days.

Besides, leftovers are too practical to be ignored. It would be a criminal waste of food to not save dinner for other meals, and it would be a waste of money and time to cook smaller dinners meant to only last one meal. You can feel however you want about leftovers, but as far as I'm concerned, there is no getting around them. You must eat your way through them.

He knows all this. He knew it without me telling him, which is why it took two years for him to let slip that leftovers bug him just a little. His dad does not like them, and I doubt they were a problem at his mom's house, what with the five boys eating up everything. If he's been struggling to get through another night of sloppy joes, it's a surprise to me. He eats reheated dinners without a complaint and usually with a compliment.

I've been thinking, though. Maybe I can't get away from leftovers, but I could rearrange my cooking schedule such that it doesn't seem like the same thing every night. If I cooked Monday and Tuesday, then we could rotate the leftovers Wednesday and Thursday such that we're not eating the same thing two nights in a row. Compromise!

That was my thought last Tuesday night. I had made two dishes of stuffed pasta shells on Monday, and I wasn't going to be able to cook on Wednesday, because he had a show. So I would make another whole meal Tuesday. That way, he wouldn't have to eat the stuffed pasta shells three nights in a row. Tuesday, I made a tuna casserole, green beans with almonds, and baked acorn squash. The thing was, he didn't seem all that excited about the dinner, though I had clearly gone to more effort than usual. Sometimes a one-pot casserole is the whole meal, but we had two, TWO, vegetables. Sure, they were covered in butter and sugar, but they were fresh vegetables. Where was the appreciation? Men, let that be a lesson to you: show your lady a little bit of gratitude, and pretty soon she expects it all the time!

It wasn't until Thursday when I figured it out. The giveaway was that one of the dishes of pasta shells was completely eaten up, despite the fact that I hadn't touched them. He doesn't usually eat lunch at the house, but somehow, pasta shells were disappearing. Wouldn't you know it, the week I try to avoid feeding him leftovers is the week that I try a new recipe that he can't get enough of. He said that they were better than the ones served at the Italian restaurant where he works. Aw, shucks.

So, make these! And then eat them for days!

Stuffed Pasta Shells
The recipe says to use the whole 12 oz box of jumbo shells. However, I must be a generous stuffer, because I only used half of the shells (after cooking all of them). And then I used the other half of the shells in the tuna casserole, because I am a food reuse ninja. I also used a big can of crushed tomatoes, rather than diced or whole.

Sharp-eyed readers will note that I've linked to this recipe site several times recently. It's a very good resource. Some of the recipes are a little exotic, but there are many on there that use common ingredients. Plus, there's just a metric crap-ton of recipes on there.

on the karma payment plan.

I will concede that I was not paying close attention. I had just bought 4 shirts and 1 dress, all name-brand and new, for the grand total of a dollar. Perhaps if I had not just gotten such a great deal, I might have seen the old man's Ford before he backed it into my bumper as I drove through the parking lot. Maybe he had just gotten a good score, too, and he was too excited to check behind him before backing out into a bright red hatchback. If that is the case, then maybe people should wait a few minutes after a particularly good yard sale before operating a motor vehicle.

I heard the crunch and stopped immediately. I got out, trying not to freak out about the possible damage. He did the same, and I saw that he was old and very tiny - 5'6" at the most. I asked if he was okay, though it was inconceivable to me that anyone could have been injured in that low-speed collision.

"Yes, yes, I am fine." He was foreign, maybe from somewhere in Europe. He was somebody's tiny immigrant grandfather. His right back bumper looked terrible. It had a big dent in it, which was streaked with red. My car looked much better - just a few silver lines with no dent at all. I was relieved. I was just about to ask about exchanging insurance information, when-

"I give you a hug now." He came toward me, a giant hulking woman, and we had a brief, awkward hug. It was all very unexpected.

"Okay, bye now!" He said, getting back into his car.

Uh...

I felt a little strong-armed. Clearly, he was trying to get out of there. I had no intention of reporting the accident. Even if my bumper had ended up looking more like his, I wouldn't have done anything about it. It was sad to see my pretty little Honda Fit get damaged for the first time - the first in what will likely be a long process of changing from a new car into an old car. But that's what happens to cars, at least the cars I own. Just ask my old one.

But the little old man did not know that I wasn't the type to give a crap about a scratch or two. He did know that the accident was his fault. Maybe that's how he gets out of things - a hug and playing up the foreign grandfather bit. The very idea that he thought he was pulling one over on me made me want to be a jerk about it. Look here, old man, you're not fooling anyone! I coulda picked him up, you know, he was so tiny. I coulda just shook him upside-down until his wallet fell out, and then I woulda had his insurance info and his milk money!

But I wasn't a jerk and I didn't pick him up and give him a good shake. I waved goodbye, got into my severely depreciated car, and drove away. I was much more attentive as I headed down the road.

Later, I began to worry. What if this guy took down my tag number and reported it? Was he just trying to get out of paying for my tarnished bumper or was he going to try and run a scam?

I decided that I wasn't going to worry about it. Either scenario - the one where he was trying to avoid paying higher insurance or the one where I got arrested for a hit and run - was conceivable for me. Maybe I should have taken down his tag number or gotten his insurance information or something, just to be safe. That would have been the most prudent. But what I did was fine, too. I did the right thing, not necessarily in terms of protecting myself from non-decent people, but in terms of being a decent person. I'm just hoping that my good behavior will buy me something in the karma department.

the 27 club.

I wrote this last night, on October 29. That sounds weird, because as far as I'm concerned, I'm writing it right now. But you're reading it today, which is tomorrow to the me that is typing right now. But don't you worry about that me, because she's still stuck in yesterday.

Time's a funny thing.

Anyway, it's important to note that I wrote this on October 29, 2010. That is my last day to join the 27 Club. I'm going to assume that many of you do not know what the 27 Club is, so I'll tell you (assuming again that you're too lazy to click on the wikipedia link I provided). The 27 Club is a group made up of musicians that died at the ripe old age of 27. Now, I'm not a musician, and I'm not famous, so even if I died on October 29, 2010, no one would update the Wikipedia article to add my name, picture, and exact age (27 years and 364 days) under Kurt Cobain. So really, it's not even worth trying to join at this point.

I wasn't really worried. For one thing, I wasn't engaging in the kind of activities that are likely to bring about a young rock star death. I didn't do any heroin at all this year. I worry more about Josh, who will be eligible to join the 27 Club for another seven months. He hasn't done any heroin this year either, but he is a musician. He's not famous yet, but he's trying.

It's not worth dying so young if you're not famous. If you're famous, then generations of youth will mourn your untimely death. They will drink too much and do drugs in your memory, because kids suck at irony. They will add your name to the Wikipedia article and think about how cool it must be to go out in a blaze of glory, choked on your own vomit, just like Jimi, man. When you're 15, you can't imagine living much past 27 anyway. Anything older than that is just too old.

If you're not famous, then only your friends and your family are sad. Even if they are particularly devastated, it's just not enough sadness. Unless a whole lot of people are really really sad, like enough people for several impromptu candlelight vigils in the major cities, then you're not a rock 'n' roll martyr. You're just dead. The gap between tragic and legendary is measured in sadness.

If all went well between the time I wrote this and today, I am now too old. But not really. In a few years, maybe on October 29, 2015, I will remember being 28. I'll say to myself, "I remember 28. I was so young." That's what I say about 24 now, as I think about all the things that I did not know then. I remember 24. I was so young. It's like what I say when I look at the pictures of the 27 Club. Look at Janis. She was 27. She was so young.

tired fingers.

For about two weeks there, I was in the ice cream business.

While Josh was not nearly as excited as I was the day that I brought home an ice cream machine, after he tasted the mint julep ice cream, he was on board. He ended up buying the same exact machine for a fellow server at his restaurant who was getting married. The bride was apparently not impressed at first, until someone explained to her how very easy it is to make homemade ice cream. She made three batches in the first two weeks. Pretty soon, she was talking up the ice cream at work, trying to convince the owner of the restaurant that he could sell homemade ice cream there. The owner was skeptical, but then Josh brought in some intensely rich dark chocolate ice cream that we made. It was very convincing.

Our deal was that his coworker would provide strawberry and cappuccino, while Josh would bring chocolate and pistachio. Each serving would sell for $4, which would be split down the middle between the owner and the maker. We looked at recipes to find just the right one, because we hadn't actually made pistachio ice cream before. There are a lot of them out there, but I knew what I was looking for. I wanted one that started out with ingredients as raw as possible. I wanted ones that called for actual nuts in the ingredients, not extract or paste. I found the recipe, we made it, and, man, was it good.

And suddenly, Josh and I had an ice cream business. Our lives suddenly seemed to revolve around dairy. We were always cleaning the machine or visiting new stores to compare prices on pistachios or staying up late to churn another batch. We had a jar of egg whites in the fridge, leftovers from all the yolks that were going into the product. We never did figure out what to do with them, other than make a lot of angel food cake. I bet it would be good with ice cream.

It was all very exciting, and I was trying hard to keep my feet on the ground. We talked about our ice cream futures - seasonal flavors, whether other local restaurants might be interested, the idea of selling it by the pint. Josh wanted to come up with names for our flavors and also for our business, but to me that was too far. We just started making two flavors at one restaurant. Let's see where it goes before we get ahead of ourselves. It did seem to be selling pretty well, though I suspect that was party due to a pair of waiters with vested interest in the enterprise.

It seemed like a story of opportunity in the making. We were just regular people who had a very common countertop home appliance. If this thing really took off, where would it go? Years from now, would we be telling this story in an interview for Gourmet magazine? Even as I was telling myself to take it slowly, I had a vision in my head. I imagined being featured in the Raleigh News & Observer, where they run a column sharing recipes from local eateries. Wouldn't it be wonderful if someone wrote in to ask for the recipe to make ice cream just like that little Italian place in Morrisville? I've clipped many a recipe from that column. This was my silly fantasy.

And then it was over. One night we stayed up shelling a pound of pistachios while watching The Muppet Show, the next day Josh made the cream which I churned that night, and the day after that, his boss decided that there was more money to be made by buying ice cream in big batches from the food distributor. I don't doubt that's true, but I also doubt that the distributor's ice cream is as good as ours. They probably didn't even shell the pistachios themselves with their poor tired fingers. Surely tired fingers count for something. That's what we could have called it - Tired Fingers Pistachio Ice Cream.

In some ways, I am disappointed, and in others, I am not. Already, it was getting to be a lot of work. I was never sure that the pistachio was even going to be profitable, because the nuts are so expensive. It's hard to enjoy a quality product when you suspect you're going to be losing money on it. I will still make ice cream at home, the way I intended to when I bought the machine. I will still seek out interesting recipes that use raw ingredients. Now I can just enjoy it.

And so for two weeks, I thought about ice cream differently, and I saw an unexpected future, where my life revolved around it. It seems that unexpected future will not come to pass, but I'm all the more interested to see what will, if even such an unlikely prospect as having an ice cream business was briefly possible.

[citation needed.]

Someday, I will learn to not eat at an Irish pub. They seem like such a good idea. They always have interesting themed decor and a general commitment to joviality. And the food sounds good. It seems like comfort food, yet it's vaguely ethnic and cultural. It's always disappointing. Perhaps that's the point. Perhaps as a whole, the Irish are disappointed about something or other.

We walked into the Irish pub at about fifteen minutes until 11. We were in a strange city and starving in the way that middle-class Americans starve. I'm sure there are lots of places in Washington, D.C. that serve food late night, but we didn't know where any of them were. So we went to Dupont Circle, because I knew there were a lot of bars open late in that neighborhood. The key word there is "bar". We wanted to eat, because all we'd had since lunch had been three breadsticks apiece. Okay, well, and some whiskey. It was time for food.

It's true - Dupont Circle was hoppin'. There were a ton of people out on the street, and every bar was packed with bodies. That wasn't what we were looking for either. It was a dilemma, because we were a pair of hungry introverts, and the only places with food were also full of strangers. We took a chance on the pub, because they said they were serving food for 15 more minutes. She ordered a plate of hummus and I asked for the chicken pot pie. We both had another drink.

The walls were covered with pictures of writers. There was a whole wall dedicated to James Joyce and W.B. Yeats, who was quite a fox, if you're into that whole tortured artist look. The wall behind us had a slew of different book covers. We only recognized a few of the names. The rest were obscure and amazingly freaking Irish. Imagine the fifteen most stereotypically Irish names you can think of, and those were the names on the covers on that wall. Clearly, there was a theme here. I knew Joyce and Yeats were from the Emerald Isle, but I wasn't so sure about some of the others. George Bernard Shaw? Oscar Wilde? Samuel Beckett? C.S. Lewis? Okay, I didn't know for certain, but I was pretty sure that a couple of those guys were just regular English.

Let me save you some googling: they are all Irish. I know, because I used the pub's free wifi and verified. You can look at my phone's internet history from that night and see Wikipedia article after Wikipedia article of Irish authors. Whoever decorated that pub did their homework.

At some point, we were approached by a couple of men. Or rather, she was approached, and her approacher had a wing man, who was for me. His wing man was a short and middle-aged Egyptian. I suppose I could feel bad about being the less-desirable friend, but I think I got the better side of the conversation. She had to deal with a man on the make, while I got to talk to Mo, who was shy and seemed embarrassed about the whole thing. Mo and I talked about Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt's only Nobel laureate in literature.

At some point, the other guy, whose name we never quite cared enough about to catch, brought up Star Trek. Maybe he was trying to play up his dorkiness, since he found out that they were trying to chat up two female computer scientists (what are the chances?). Not knowing anything about programming, he went for the sci-fi angle.

"What do you think about Star Trek?" he asked me.

"I'm in favor."

"Well, yeah." He rolled his eyes. Perhaps he did not know that I was a smart aleck.

"Alright, fine." You want to get into it, buddy? I can do that. "It's like the Odyssey."

Blank stares. That was not what he was expecting.

"Everything can be broken down into either the Iliad or the Odyssey. Star Trek is the Odyssey, because it's man against the unknown. Star Wars is the Iliad, which is man against himself."

I felt triumphant. The conversation went nowhere after that, though I had a lot more to say on the subject. I could have talked about what each story indicates about its writer's vision of the future of mankind. I could have talked about how George Lucas seems to think that man will make great technological, but not necessarily moral, progress, and how Gene Roddenberry hopes that man will someday overcome his tendency to be a jerk. Our new friends were not so interested. They educated us about Scotch instead.

The truth is, that whole conversation could have used a couple of footnotes. While everyone else might have assumed that I pulled all that Iliad/Odyssey stuff from somewhere behind me, the truth was I stole it wholesale. I'm a bright girl, but that is not the sort of thing I would come up with on my own. I lack either the intuition or the training to notice those kinds of parallels in art. But I'm dating someone who is very, very good at seeing those kinds of connections. One day, we had a conversation, or rather, The Conversation, of Star Wars vs. Star Trek. And that's what he said - that whole bit about man vs. man and man vs. the unknown. I remember thinking that it was brilliant and beautifully simple, but maybe I'm just in love. The idea got stuck on a crag in my brain and has been hanging out there ever since.

When I got home, I told Josh about the Irish pub. I told him that we had been approached, and I told him how I'd ripped off his ideas without giving proper credit. I was a little embarrassed about it, just like I had felt like I was stealing at the time. These are not my ideas, and yet I am taking credit for them. Really I just heard them and liked them and then reused them.

I don't know how I expected Josh to react, but it wasn't what I got. He was charmed and flattered. For one thing, he had forgotten all about the whole conversation, so it was like he was hearing this idea for the first time. And when he heard it, he loved it and was even more gratified to find out that he had come up with it in the first place.

It must be nice to be brilliant. You just come up with great ideas and forget them. Me, I take every great idea I've ever had and hide it in a jar under my bed so I can look at it to remind myself that I am capable of coming up with them at all.

Was I expecting him to be angry? No, not really. I was just mildly ashamed to admit that I wasn't always entirely original, because I like to think that I am. This was like cheating. But that's ridiculous. It's not as if everyone else cites their sources all the time.

I've only dated men that had areas of expertise far from my own. A lot of my knowledge about art and music came from a boyfriend, not me. So when those topics come up, I want to contribute, but I feel like prefacing everything with "Well, my boyfriend says..." rather take credit for something that I didn't bother to come up with. I feel stupid and uninformed for not knowing enough about those topics to have formed my own opinions. I feel like a 50s housewife, who has no thoughts but what her man has put into her head.

But I dunno. We're all getting ideas from somewhere. I suspect that other people do it a lot, and some (most?) of them don't think twice about giving credit. Then again, most of it is a mixture of stuff we've heard or read and then stuff that got added to it as we thought about it. That's how progress happens, isn't it? Ideas building upon ideas. And what's the point of ideas, but to spread them?

Maybe next time that guy tries to pick up a dorky girl, he'll compare Star Trek to the Odyssey. And I bet he won't give me any credit at all.

cruft.

Josh was cleaning the stand mixer before making a pizza crust. The mixer is an old KitchenAid that I bought for $30 at a yard sale. Its name is Captain Dough Hook. After I bought the Captain, I gave him a thorough cleaning, even to the point of using a paperclip to get into the little crevices that were full of gunk. In the couple of years since then, I have not given him another cleaning. Usually it's just a quick swipe with a dish towel when the accumulation of flour gets too thick. A deep cleaning would be to use a wet dish towel. Me, I don't care if something is messy, as long as it's my mess.

Captain Dough Hook is old and monstrous. Maybe the new ones, the ones that come in all the different colors, are incredibly heavy and unwieldy, too. I wouldn't know. My mother has one of the newer ones, in forest green, but she doesn't use it much. I bet I could have taken it from her basement and she would never have known the difference. Or I could have even asked her for it and she probably would have hemmed and hawed and then handed it over. A few years later, she would have forgotten how she never used that one and would have bought another one.

I love you, Mama.

But I like good old Captain Dough Hook. He's vintage. He's sturdy and has already proved the test of time, and he affirms that you can get good stuff at yard sales. He gets a lot of use at my house. He helps me make bread and chocolate pie, and now Josh has taken to making his pizza crust with the Captain.

Anyway, Josh was doing the deep cleaning (wet dish towel), commenting on the dried-on gunk of doughs past.

"Yeah, Captain Dough Hook accumulates a lot of cruft," I said.

"Cruft?" Josh asked.

"Yes. Cruft."

"I've never heard that word. I like it."

"It means gunk. Cruft. I got it from work."

It's not often that I use a word that Josh has never heard before. It's true that I picked it up from other programmers. It's also true that he doesn't hang out with a lot of programmers, but it was still surprising to me that it was unfamiliar to him. It made me wonder whether the word was not all that common. So we looked it up.

It is a programming word. I had figured that it was a regular word that meant generic, but physical gunk, that had then been applied to code, virtual gunk, by some very literate programmer a long time ago. But actually, it was a programming word. The wikipedia article gives an etymology, which is possibly made up. However, it's amusing, so I have decided to believe it.

"The origin of the term is uncertain, but it may be derived from Harvard University Cruft Laboratory, which was the Harvard Physics Department's radar lab during World War II. As late as the early 1990s, unused technical equipment could be seen stacked in front of Cruft Hall's windows. According to students, if the place filled with useless machinery is called Cruft Hall, the machinery itself must be cruft. This image of "discarded technical clutter" quickly migrated from hardware to software."

So it started out referring to physical computer junk, then someone started using it to describe virtual computer gunk. And then, on October 2, 2010, I stretched it to apply to physical, non-computer gunk. Maybe I was the first person to ever expand the use of "cruft" into the kitchen. Look at me, I'm a trendsetter!

Of course, that sort of thing happens all the time. People take words and use them in new ways and other people hear them and start using the word in the new way and maybe some other new ways of their own. It would be impossible to trace the first time someone made that leap for cruft, and it's likely that they didn't even notice the linguistic trails they were blazing.

So that's why I'm documenting the moment that I used "cruft" to describe old pieces of dried-up dough. If this is the first documented use, then I get credit, and someday, I will be in all the dictionaries. I have witnesses, too: Josh and Captain Dough Hook.*

*Note: Okay, I know that if you just google "cruft," you'll come up with lots of examples of people using it to describe dust bunnies or toe jam or some other non-computer, physical gunk. I can only say that those people must have been spying on me last week and then pre-dated their websites in an effort to take credit for my inspired innovation in language.

the bunny.

So after the incredibly ambitious and decadently delicious Mint Julep ice cream, I attempted Chocolate Hazelnut Ice Cream. Unfortunately, it was pretty much a failure. I burned the caramel, which made it difficult to coat the hazelnuts properly. But the big mistake was in the custard. The final product ended up with weird lumps in it. The taste was phenomenal - very, very rich. Also, the discarded hazelnut pieces made a kind of amazing dessert caviar that we just ate on its own. You could hardly call the experience a loss. But as ice cream, it was not good.

But that's okay! Because I can try to make it again, or I can try something else. I don't know if any of you guys care at all about the world of homemade ice cream, but the more I see of it, the more I am amazed. The possibilities of ice cream seem limitless to me. We have all been wasting so much time eating stuff from the store. Thirty-one flavors is just not enough. I want more options, and I shall have them in my own home. The only trouble is, I never want to make any one flavor again. No matter how amazing it was, the potential of all the other flavors in the wide world of food overcomes me.

While Josh was not that excited about the ice cream machine when I bought it, he is starting to catch my enthusiasm. A couple of weeks ago, he got a craving for ice cream. I tried to feel him out to figure out what he wanted, but he was sort of all over the place, as if he didn't even know. Finally, I realized that what he wanted was The Bunny.

That didn't make any sense to you, so I'll explain it. Hold on to your seats, we're about to veer wildly off-topic. There is a Veggietales retelling of the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego about a candy factory where they make chocolate bunnies (it makes sense in the video, I promise). The evil boss of the chocolate factory wants to force the good, overworked employees to eat chocolate bunnies, when we all know they should be eating their vegetables. He sings, as animated pickles are wont to do. The first song is about how he ate the bunny. Then he does a reprise, saying that he ate the bunny, and it was good, but now he has a tummyache. He should have listened to his mama and eaten his vegetables.

I can tell that the above explanation didn't make any dadgum sense, so here is a video. It is of poor quality, but perhaps it will help.


So. At some point in our illustrious history, Josh and I ate banana splits for dinner - neopolitan ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and cherries on top of a banana cut down the length. It was delicious. We got tummyaches. We sang the revised Bunny Song. We did not learn our lesson, because we did it a couple more times, too. This is our decadent, child-free, twenty-something lifestyle. We don't go off to Vegas on a whim, we don't go to cocaine parties, we don't have one-night stands, but we occasionally eat sundaes for supper.

The other night, Josh, still being a decadent and child-free twenty-something, wanted The Bunny. Which is fine, but kind of a tall order for my little Cuisinart ice cream maker. It doesn't do neopolitan. It does strawberry, it does chocolate, it does vanilla, but not all at once. It would take three days to make all that, because you have to freeze the ice cream maker's bowl before you churn. Also, I got the sense that he just wanted to eat junk. He didn't necessarily want The Actual Bunny, but just The Figurative Bunny, which is odd, because The Bunny is pretty darn figurative already.

I suggested a compromise. What if we made Banana Ice Cream? Then he could put the chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and cherries on top of it. He agreed, in a sullen sort of way. He accused me of hijacking his banana split idea and just taking it where I wanted to go. It's a valid complaint. But that did not stop me.

As he was eating the banana ice cream, however, he meekly told me that I had been right after all. The banana ice cream had met his Bunny-wanting and satisfied it. Booyah.

Roasted Banana Ice Cream
Guys, this recipe is way easier than the Mint Julep one. You don't have to use the stove at all. Just the oven and a food processor. You can do that. It's still delicious. The one tricksy part is the caster sugar. Don't buy that stuff, it's just superfine white sugar. You can put regular white sugar in the food processor and give it a whirl for about a minute. Voila - caster sugar.

This ice cream is like bananas melting in your mouth and tripping happily down into your tummy. In my limited experience, homemade ice cream is really about using fresh ingredients. You'll feel like you never knew bananas until that moment.

I am thinking of making some sort of Banana Pudding Ice Cream Cake, which sounds like just a bunch of dessert words strung together. But think of it - a Nilla wafer crust, a layer of banana ice cream, a layer of bananas, topped with whipped cream. Why has no one done this yet?

a dispatch from the ministry of silly names.

Last year, I received a package in the mail that was not addressed to me. It came to my house, because it was addressed to the mailbox that sits at the end of my driveway. But it was not addressed to anyone that lives in my house. I get some mail for previous tenants, which I sometimes forward, depending on whether they look like subpeonas or tax refunds. Those names are all familiar, though, and this package was meant to be delivered to someone that I'd never heard of: The Reverend Pamela Pumblebritches.

You're not supposed to open other people's mail, but I did it. I can only hope that Pamela is as forgiving as her title implies.

Actually, the package was for me, because it was my birthday. It was from my old college roommate, who is apparently a very silly person. I'd never known that about her, even after living together for 3 years. She seemed to think that I might be a very silly person, because she sent me earrings that looked like Philips head screws!

So that was a great joke, and the name Pumblebritches gives me a little private giggle even on the days when I don't wear the earrings. Fast forward to a few days ago, when I again received some mail sent to our good friend the Reverend. However, this mail was from State Farm Insurance. It advised Pamela that 70% of drivers that switched to State Farm saved money on their car insurance (makes you wonder about the other 30%, doesn't it?). Inside was even a fake check, addressed to Ms. Pumblebritches, promising her an unspecified amount of SAVINGS.

From this experience, we can learn that the online vendor of amazingly ridiculous earrings, Uncommon Goods, sells personal information to third parties. We can also fight back against the misuse of our information by always sending packages to silly names. That way, State Farm may have our address, but they will always be sending their letters to the wrong person. If you use a different name for each company you order from, you will immediately know who snitched.

Not that it does any good at all. You could complain about it on your blog, I suppose, and not order from that company anymore, but you're still getting fake checks from State Farm. Junk mail, like spam, is sort of inevitable. Then again, how mad can you really get when you are holding a letter addressed to Rev. Pamela Pumblebritches?

albondigas.

Last night, I was making Albondigas Soup, and it came time to add the meatballs to the pot. It was my first time making this recipe, and I was very careful to follow the instructions to the letter. The recipe said to add the meatballs one at a time, rather than just tilting the plate over and allowing them to slide into the hot brothy bath in a meatball avalanche. So I started doing that. One meatball at a time.

Josh thought this was hilarious, that I would bother to pick up each and every meatball and plop it into the pot. But he is the kind of guy that likes to play fast and loose with his albondigas.

"One at a time? What, did you name each one?"

"Don't make fun. That's what the recipe said to do."

"That one is Fred." I dropped a meatball in.

"Stop it."

"And that's Bob." Another one went in.

FINE. If that's the way he wants to play it, then I'm game. I started dropping them in faster, but still one at a time.

"Frank! Larry! Elliot! Steve! Jim! Matthew! Mark! Luke! John! Jesus! Diego! Angelo! Uh, uh, AAAAAHHHH!" He ran out of names while I still had two nameless meatballs on the plate.

"HA! I won! I won the meatball naming race!"

And that is the silly kind of house that I live in.

*Note: The soup was good, but a little too subtle. Needs some oomph.

pancho villa.

There is a Mexican restaurant in my hometown named Pancho Villa. You have likely been to it before, even if you have never been to the small town of Lenoir, nestled in the North Carolina foothills. My experience with Mexcian restaurants is that most (but not all) of them are pretty much the same. The name, location, and the decor might be different, but the food is the same. In Boone, this restaurant was named Dos Amigos. In Winston-Salem, there were several, but the favorite was named La Carreta. They all had the same chips and salsa and the same lunch specials. I favored the Burrito Grande with steak, which is the #8 at Pancho Villa. It might be a different number at other places, but I assure you, they have it. Just like they have several burrito, enchilada, fajita, and quesadilla combos and something else called a Speedy Gonzalez.

There is nothing wrong with these places, of course. There is a place in my world for generic Mexican restaurants. They're cheap and reasonably tasty. Not spectacular, but consistently decent. I never go to one of these places on my own, but if I were going out to eat with other people that wanted to patronize one of these establishements, I would not mind. I would get the Burrito Grande and be happy with it.

The one in Lenoir has a giant margarita, which my parents were obsessed with for a while. It was served in a foot-tall stemmed glass, one meant for holding dinner mints or kittens or something less decadent than a tequila-based mixed drink. It was like buying a pitcher of margaritas, but in a great big silly glass. Every time my parents went to any other Mexican restaurant, say Dos Amigos or La Carreta or whatever it's called in your town, they would ask about the giant margarita. And though I spent a couple of paragraphs telling you that all of these Mexican restaurants are essentially the same, they do not all have giant margaritas. They have margaritas that taste exactly like the ones at Pancho Villa, and you can order them by the normal-sized glass or by the pitcher, but not by the giant novelty glass. I think my parents have finally gotten over the giant margarita, because they don't ask about it anymore. Now they are obsessed with the boot-shaped glass you can get at Texas Roadhouse if you order the Texas Iced Tea. They don't even like Texas Iced Tea, and yet they have ordered enough over several visits to supply themselves and each of their children with a boot glass. They tried to order a margarita in a boot glass once, but the waiter wouldn't allow it.

In any case, I am relieved that they are over the giant margarita, because it turns out that 27 is not too old to be embarrassed by your parents asking the waiter ridiculous questions about huge liquor drinks. I will let you know if I ever find out when too old for that is.

Anyway, the whole reason I started talking about generic Mexican restaurants is to tell you that you don't need to go to them anymore. I've found that learning to cook has absolutely ruined my desire to go out to eat. And let me tell you, I used to love to eat out. When I was growing up, we hardly ever ate out, because we were frugal and practical people. When I grew up, I was a frugal and practical person, but I had a serious weakness when it came to restaurants. I would force limits on myself, because, it's so stupidly expensive. But now I can cook, and I can just make for myself something that is as good as or better than a lot of restaurant food. It never even occurs to me to stop somewhere for a midweek dinner anymore, whereas I used to have to talk myself out of the unnecessary expense. It's not that I have more will power, but the appeal is gone.

Basically, I've turned into my mother. She never liked to eat out at places that served food that she could just as easily make herself. So we never went to Shoney's, and I don't think she likes Cracker Barrel much either. I feel the same way about those places. The better I get at cooking, the more restaurants I cross off my list. I crossed Pancho Villa (and Dos Amigos, La Carreta, etc.) off my list after the first time I made enchiladas.

I have two enchilada recipes in my regular cooking rotation. They are both better than the Burrito Grande and they make a lot of food. When I make enchiladas, I am prepared to eat them for lunch for days. Seeing as how they are so yummy, I am totally okay with that.

Beef Enchiladas
Instead of using her canned sauce variation, I make my own enchilada sauce from this 10-minute recipe. It makes just enough for two-thirds of the enchilada recipe, so I cut the rest of the ingredients accodingly. I also use flour tortillas, but I still fry them for a few seconds, like she recommends. The reason for that is just because I did it that way the first time, and I liked it. Using the giant burrito tortillas, this makes 10 enchiladas, which fit very snugly into a 9x13 baking dish.

Chicken, Black Bean, and Spinach Enchiladas
I'm not sure if this is actually healthier, but it seems like it should be. I ended up baking three chicken breasts at 350 until cooked through in the spice and herb mix she recommends in the article, and it was yummy. I would like to experiment with other fillings besides fresh spinach, which is a bit pricey. Don't be scared by the homemade salsa verde and sour cream sauce - they are totally easy to make. You can get tomatillos at some regular grocery stores, but they are incredibly cheap at Latin grocery stores (as is cilantro).

And, just for my parents, here is my margarita recipe. You can serve it in whatever kind of glass you want.

other people's heirlooms.

I have a giant space of wall in my house that is meant to display something grand. It's high up on a wall in the living room, such that you need a tall ladder to hang anything there. There is a small light that we never use that is pointed directly at that wall. Clearly, it's meant for something large and impressive, something that you wouldn't mind feeling like it was watching over you. If my house were haunted, it would be a huge portrait of some ancestor, and the eyes would follow you. Josh's dad has a huge picture of the Beatles when they were young. Maybe he would hang that picture there. John, Paul, George, and Ringo watch over us all.

Ever since I moved in, I've known that I wanted to hang my grandfather's map there. It's of South America. It reminds me of Kansas.

Do you like maps? My sister asked me that once, a couple of years ago when we were trying to get to know each other as adults. She said that she and her husband loved maps, and I pictured them snuggling on a bear-skin rug in front of a roaring fire with an atlas in their laps. Since that didn't sound like something that appealed to me at all, I said no. My tone said, Are you crazy? Then a week later, I found some prints of 16th century world maps at a yard sale and bought them all up like they were printed on hotcakes. Only then did I understand what my sister's question meant, and I realized that I do like maps. I felt bad for acting like she was crazy, because I like maps an awful lot. Aside from those old prints, I also have a topographical map of Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee (which gets lots of compliments). And I have my grandfather's map of South America.

Why do we like maps? Because they're neat, duh. Maps are simplified representations of things which are too big for us to look at directly. We need something smaller and compact so we can understand. The world is a vast and confusing place, and maps simplify it on at least a physical level. We can all appreciate some simplicity now and then. Old maps are doubly neat. The frequently have beautiful illustrations of the world's peoples and places. They are snapshots of what the world looked like back then, or more accurately what we thought it looked like. A map is as much a picture of our perceptions of the world as it is of the world itself. But also, and maybe most of all, maps remind us of places. What is the first thing that anyone does when they see a map? Find some place that has a special connection to them. They point at it and tell you about it, sharing their memories.

See? Maps are neat.

I have no idea if my grandfather thought maps were neat. Sure, he had a giant one of South America. It's a classroom map, one attached to a spring-loaded wooden bar at the top, so you can pull it down when you want to see where Paraguay is and then roll it back up when you want to write down some factoids about some major exports of Paraguay (soybeans, cotton, edible oils, electricity) on the blackboard. It's from 1939. My grandfather used it as a screen; he showed home movies on the back of it. Maybe he liked maps, but maybe he just wanted a way to watch films without needing a big blank wall.

For being seventy years old, the South America map is in pretty good shape. The spring on the rod still works, and the picture is almost perfect. There is a crease in the middle which I am hoping will disappear as it hangs. There are only a few tiny spots where the image is flaking off the canvas backing. Part of the bottom had escaped the lower bar and someone had attempted to repair it with tape. At first, Josh wanted to do another tape-based repair. But I stubbornly said no, because the previous tape job had peeled away some of the print. We were going to fix it right. So we very carefully separated the lower bar, slid the bottom edge of the map into place, and replaced the tiny nails to hold it there. I am not generally a perfectionist, but some things are important. We got out the giant ladder and the studfinder and hung it up. My taste is not for everyone, but I think it looks amazing, just the right size for a blank expanse of wall. South America watches over us all.

While it would be nice to say that I remember watching movies on the back of this map, I never knew anything about it until a couple of years ago. We took a trip to Kansas to move my grandmother out of her farm house so that she could come live with my parents. This was a sentimental trip for me, the last time I would ever visit the farm that had been the setting for so many childhood memories (if ever you and I found ourselves looking at a map of Kansas, I would point out Great Bend to you). I very much wanted Josh to see it, too, so that when I told him a story about some summer long ago, he could get a sense of the way it looked and smelled and sounded. It was very important to me that he get just a glimpse of it before it was gone.

All that mushy stuff aside, the yard saler in me knew that the farmhouse was full of the stuff from multiple generations of my family. If I saw an ad for a sale that said they were cleaning out a two-story farmhouse (with storm shelter), a barn, and a garage after several decades of accumulation, I would be there when it opened.

In terms of stuff, the trip did not disappoint. Josh rescued a bamboo fishing rod and antique fly rod to give to his dad, which made us both heroes come Christmas. He also got some old ammunition containers and a bunch of old belt buckles. I got a teapot, a pocketwatch, and a 1939 classroom map of South America. My parents got a buffalo skin and a tiny old lady to come live with them.

But even I could not keep all the stuff. We took truckloads of stuff to the Salvation Army in town. This was a decision of necessity. You can't keep everything. Not every little thing owned by my grandparents can become a treasured heirloom. You have to pick and choose. I'm sad sometimes when I see people selling beautiful things owned by their recently deceased family members. They are making that necessary decision, too. But I promise, it's okay, because there are people like me who will buy those things and treasure them anew.

I have a house full of heirlooms: linens, jewelry, furniture, glassware, etc., etc., and so forth. While I love them for their history, I am aware that the history is sort of disconnected from me. They are other people's heirlooms. But this map is mine. It was passed down in my own family (well, I guess I passed it down to myself). If I had found it at a yard sale, I would have bought it anyway. Because I love maps, because I love unusual decor, because I love old everyday things. I would probably still hang it in that blank space of wall with the spotlight pointed at it. When people came over and noticed it (they might not compliment it, but I assure you, they would definitely notice it), I would tell them about where I got it, like I do with pretty much all of my things. However, this way, I can explain to them why a map of South America reminds me so much of Kansas.

Sorry this picture is so terrible. It looks great in person, I promise!

net, rod, and reel.

Net fishing seems like cheating, really. Or maybe all fishing is cheating because we're people and they're fish, and fish have three thoughts over and over: swim, swim, hungry. But net fishing is not very sporting.

For years I went net fishing with my Uncle Freeman and my dad. Freeman would take us out on the Pamlico Sound in his boat, us and his lab Blacky. I'm not sure if Blacky was a single dog or a series of dogs that all looked the same. Freeman would drive us out to some spot on the sound, usually near a smallish island. All the sound looked the same to me, and so I never had any idea where we were. Clearly, Freeman knew, because he was able to get us back to the dock where his old pickup waited to haul us back home. When I was a kid, before I started driving, riding in a car was like that, too. Everything looked the same and the fact that we ever managed to get to a destination was amazing. How did the grown-ups know the way? But it was even more like that on the sound, where there were no roads to limit your direction, and every shore looked exactly the same.

Here's how net fishing works. You have a net, maybe five feet wide and 100 feet long. You put the net in the water, creating a big circle of net. One edge has buoys on it to keep it at the top, and the other side has weights to drop it to the bottom. Then you wade around in the circle, waiting for some great splashing racket to happen. Then you go to the great splashing racket and untangle the fish from the net. I didn't like to untangle, so I waded around with a metal bucket floating behind me on a scratchy twine leash. I would collect the fish as Freeman and Daddy got them out. If I couldn't get the bucket over there fast enough, they'd walk around with a fish hanging by the gills from each of several fingers. Another thing I would have been amazed at if it had occurred to me was how comfortable Freeman was with fish.

I suppose there is skill in net fishing. You have to know where to put the net. But still it seems like cheating, because as soon as you pick the place, pretty much every fish there is already trapped. Maybe some of them didn't try to swim into the net, and so when we took it up again, they remained. It would be like shooting them in a really huge barrel. Still, when we went net fishing, it was to catch food. After we got back, my dad and uncle would spend the afternoon cleaning what we caught, and then we'd fry them all up. We'd take home a cooler full of fish to eat at home. Net fishing is what you do to catch food. We're not trying to be sporting, we're trying to eat.

I've been fishing the regular way, too, with a rod and a reel and some worms. A friend used to take me to local lakes and rivers and we'd sit and wait for a nibble while eating soggy sandwiches and sodas. I could bait my own hook, because I was a tomboy. We used live worms that we'd bought in a plastic container at the same gas station where we got the sandwiches. I like to see gas stations that sell bait, because it means I'm in the country. Even if it's not the same neck of the woods that I grew up in, it's still the same kind of place, just one where I don't know any of the people.

To bait a worm, you have to throw it down on the ground forcefully. That stuns them so they won't struggle when you're poking the hook through. It sounds like a bad time for the worm - being stunned, impaled, and then drowned, unless of course, you're eaten first. I took a sense of pride in baiting my own hook. But I wouldn't take the fish off the hook. Maybe if we'd caught more or I'd gone more often, I would have gotten used to that part, but I never got to that point. This kind of fishing seems to be much less about the fish and more about sitting outside quietly.

It is only recently that I've been introduced to fly fishing. Josh's dad loves to fish, just like Uncle Freeman, but he loves the activity more than the eating. He catches the fish, and then lets it go. As the comic once said, he doesn't want to eat the fish, he just wants to make it late for something. He is careful to always wet his hands in the water before touching the fish, so that the natural oils on his hands don't mess up the fish's scales and leave it open to fish infections.

Fly fishing is mystifying to watch. It is a solitary activity, a man alone out in the water. Sure, you can go with people, but each is on his own. It's not like net fishing, where you almost need someone to help pull in the nets, nor is it like regular fishing, where you can sit for hours with a friend and talk or not talk. With fly fishing, you can't even get that close to each other, because you'll just get your lines tangled up.

Fly fishing is done in the river. You wade out in the water, and you cast upstream. You wave the rod back and forth like a whip, drying out the fly before you cast again. Each cast buys you five or ten seconds as your fly floats back downstream. You have to watch it, this tiny fly on a river full of rocks and leaves and bubbles, which I found so difficult that I began to question my eyesight. Either the fish take it or they don't, and then you try again. After you've cast a few times in the same place, you wade upstream. It is a much more active kind of fishing. You cast more frequently, and you have to be aware or you'll end up with your fly in a tree. Still, I imagine that a fisherman who has been going for years gets into a kind of zone where he can cast and recast, wade and whip while thinking about whatever fishermen think about.

I like fishing, all kinds. I like being outside and I like developing random skills that are mostly useless to my lifestyle. I like the sense of a friendly relationship with nature. Way back when, these net, rod, and reel skills were developed so that man, an animal with a extra large head, could live off the sound, the lake, and the river. Some might say that comparing sport fishing to fishing to eat cheapens nature, and maybe it does. But I just don't feel that way when I do it. I feel respectful and reverant of the water, the land, the fish. It gives me hope that people can have a healthy relationship with the planet after all.

steak and toothbrush destiny.

Sammy came in and announced to the group, "I like steak now."

I was pretty confused by this statement. To say that you like steak now implies that you didn't like it before, and surely that can't be true. Who doesn't like delicious cow flesh? Sure, some people are against it, but you could probably get a lot of them to admit it is one of life's natural highs to take a bite out of juicy steak, provided they can stop picturing bloody slaughterhouse walls. Then again, Sammy doesn't like bacon and is only so-so on french fries. I know that children are picky eaters, but I was under the impression that they only wanted to eat things like french fries.

Sidestepping the first mystery (whether Sammy's taste buds were broken), the next question was why he suddenly decided that steak could be good.

"Josh let me have a piece of rare steak."

See, now this is funny. Sammy's dad, my brother Barry, likes his steak to be thoroughly cooked. It's likely that every steak that Sammy has ever tasted has been cooked until the meat forgot it was ever red. Maybe Sammy never understood why beef was even called red meat, when clearly, it was gray. Gray meat sounds disgusting, as if it might be somehow related to gray water. Josh and I both prefer our steaks to spend only a brief time on the fire. We are medium-rare all the way. I assume that people who like medium-well or well done have preferences based on some sort of ick factor, because to my mind no one would ever pick overcooked in a taste test. I figure they're just squeamish, either about the blood itself or about getting sick from contaminated meat. Choosing gray meat over red meat would be like having a glass of gray water when there is Dr. Pepper available.

I am happy that Sammy is broadening his eating horizons, and even more so that I somehow was involved in broadening them (see, I brought Josh and Josh gave him the steak, so really, I get all the credit). Unfortunately for Sammy, he is ten years old. The next time his dad grills steak in the back yard, he'll probably cook it the way he likes it, which means Sammy will have a hot dog instead.

This is the problem with being a child. You are not in control of your steak destiny.

On this same trip with that same brother and his same family (not his other one?), I found a bucket of toiletries in the bathroom. It was like having really good hotel service, because these were full-sized shampoos and conditions, toothpaste and a toothbrush. There was even a can of women's shaving cream and some disposable razors. What a nice hotel!

These amenities had been supplied by my sister-in-law. She had prepared a bucket for each of the two bathrooms in the cabin. Each of her two children had a little plastic baggie with their name on it, containing a fresh toothbrush. And I, who had forgotten a couple of personal items just like I do every single time I travel, thought about how nice it would be to have someone take care of me like that. Me, I rotate what I forget. If I forgot deodorant last time, I'm so focused on remembering it this time that I manage to leave without packing any hair bands. It would be nice to just once, not forget anything at all. It's not that big of a deal. As an adult, I can drive down the street to the store and buy replacement toiletries. But it's just one more thing to think about. What really got to me was the way the kids didn't even notice they were being taken care of.

That's the nice thing about being a child. You don't have to be in control of your toothbrush destiny.

I guess what I'm getting at is that being an adult is a mixed bag. I can order my steak however I want it, but I have to remember my own toothbrush. Increased freedom means increased responsibility, which decreases your freedom. Except that Josh can eat his steak medium-rare, and I packed shampoo for the both of us.

Hey, wait a minute...

no laughing.

When I was little, my brother used to play the No Smiling Game with me. This game consisted of him telling me that I was not allowed to smile. He would use his best mock-serious face and voice. Let me tell you, we are people who are good at mock-serious. Of course, I would smile and also start laughing a little bit, then a lot. He would respond by getting more and more fake angry until I was awash in little girl giggles.

Have you ever been awash in little girl giggles? It's all sugar and spice.

When I was in New York recently, a stranger tried to play the No Smiling Game with me. Or maybe it was the No Laughing Game. Or maybe it wasn't a game at all, and he was just kind of a jerk.

Maybe I should explain.

My friend Sarah and I went to see The 39 Steps while I was in town. I've seen the Hitchcock movie before, which is old, black and white, and heavy on the dialogue. It's a good movie, and is actually quite funny, but you do have to stick with it and pay attention. The play, while pretty faithful to the plot of the movie, was much more obviously comedic. Aside from the witty dialogue and wacky situations, there were a lot of sight gags. Most of these were a result of using a limited set and cast to do the show. So the scene in and on top of the train actually took place on a set of four wooden crates, while the actors just moved around like they were on an actual train. Part of the humor and enjoyment from the show came from the clever usage of few resources, and as the play went on, they began to actually play on the fact that there were only four people doing all these characters. I wish I could explain it better, but I can't, so I'll just say "Support live theater!"

Anyway.

At the start of intermission, the fellow next to me turned and said, "Wow, you guys didn't like that at all, did you? You sure weren't laughing very much!"

I wasn't really sure how to respond to this. Did he think that is an appropriate way to strike up a conversation with a young lady? Or maybe he was being incredibly passive aggressive in telling us that our laughing was getting in the way of his enjoyment of the show, which is really too bad, since we were having a great time. I don't remember my response; it wasn't clever. I was a bit stunned and not at all sure how to even take his comment.

To be fair, I would not be particularly surprised if I am sort of a loud laugher. Loud is one of my general characteristics. Many people have remarked upon this, and many more have looked uncomfortable when I asked about it. I can't really tell, of course, but I am comfortable with the idea that I am on the upper end of the human volume dial. However, no one has ever specifically mentioned that I laugh too loud. At inappropriate times, sure, but not too loud. Also, Sarah did not grow up in my family, so she is a person of normal volume levels. She's also much more in tune with, you know, other people having feelings and stuff.

So I don't think that we were being quite the raucous pair as he painted us. Also? It was a comedy. It's supposed to be funny. The rest of the audience thought so, too, and as a result, they laughed. The actors even had strategic pauses after the really funny bits so that the next funny bit would not be lost in the chuckles and guffaws.

I think the real question is how tight do you have to be wound such that the sound of happiness in other human beings irritates you?

At the end of intermission, he came back and made another remark about it, comparing the pair of us to a laugh track on a silent movie. I started muttering at that point, whispering to Sarah that I would offer the man some of my Kit-Kat bar, except that I'd already laughed all over it. When the second act started, I found myself self-conscious about betraying any sort of amusement at all, so as not to lose the No Laughing Game that I hadn't known we were playing. Of course, that sort of made me mad that he was spoiling the play for me because he didn't like for other people to be too happy. That made the contrarian in me want to laugh louder. Screw you, fella, I'm going to have fun whether you approve or not. But after five minutes I forgot all about that guy, because the play was just so darn good.

Support live theater!

The absolute worst moment was towards the end, when the lights when down after a scene that could have been the final one, but wasn't. One guy in the audience apparently thought it was the end, because he started clapping. He got one clap into his applause when he realized that he was the only doing it, and he stopped. So there was just one sharp bark of a clap. And it was funny! We've all been that guy before and clapped at the wrong time. It made both Sarah and me start giggling, but then we were self-conscious in our giggles, which made it all even funnier and soon we were in the throes of a giggle loop. We were trying really hard to stifle it at that point, but man, it was just so funny. We were awash.

bibliomysticism.

I have mentioned before that Josh loves books. Saying that is sort of like saying that Josh loves chocolate. It doesn't fully convey to you his feelings and how those feelings affect both of our lives. I hope by now that I have convinced to you that he loves chocolate. I've tried very hard, because his passion for chocolate is so foreign and interesting to me in its intensity that I think that you might find it intriguing as well. It's sort of like learning about other cultures. So let's talk about books now.

Josh loves books. Where some men might have a special room in the house that is just for them, perhaps with a giant television, a comfortable chair and maybe even a small fridge just for beer, Josh has a library. The library contains wall to wall bookshelves and a small writer's table which has his computer on it. The computer is not connected to the internet, because it's just for writing. He has a lifetime membership to LibraryThing, where he catalogs his books.

Josh is against e-readers. He thinks that there is something magic in the physical form of a book and that the rising tide of digitalization is the first step to Fahrenheit 451, to the death of books. There is a word for this. It's called bibliomysticism. He is a bibliomystic, which sounds like the kind of thing that requires a hooded robe. I like to picture it that way myself, as if he's a book monk, and I offer the image to you to help you understand how Josh feels about books. In literature, imagery is helpful in conveying ideas to the reader.

For the record, I disagree about e-readers. I think digitalization is a Good Thing. I think it will lead to better preservation and easier accessibility to more and more books. I am a long way off from buying an e-reader, but that's mostly because it's a lot cheaper to buy actual books at yard sales.

Which reminds me: I like to take credit for Josh's thorough conversion to the secondhand lifestyle, but at the same time, we're being overrun with books. I went and showed him that great literature is not just incredibly affordable, it's sometimes almost free. At Goodwill, books run from $.75 to $1.50. At yard sales, you can often fill a good-sized cardboard box for a dollar. He doesn't even like regular bookstores anymore, even used book stores. They bore him or maybe they taunt him with their high prices. You know, the prices that the rest of the world thinks is reasonable for a book. I think that bookstores still have their place in my life. Sometimes, I need or want a specific book now, so I have to pay the convenience fee that the retail world charges. He does not agree. He says there is so much good reading out there, available for pennies, that there is no reason to ever buy new. Just wait until the right yard sale, and you'll find it. Or you won't, but you won't lack for good reading in either case.

He is right in a lot of ways. I buy a lot more books than I used to. Once upon a time, I would only buy a book if I already knew that I would love and cherish it, because only then could I justify spending the money. Now, I buy anything that looks vaguely interesting. I read it, and then I keep it or take it to the used book store for store credit. I have discovered many wonderful and beautiful books this way, ones that I would never have picked up otherwise.

And yet, I foresee a future when the sheer number of his books will become a problem. We can't buy every book. We can't even read them all. Every time Josh leaves a yard sale with an armload of books, I raise my eyebrow at him (which is totally unfair, considering I have a sizeable collection of books and a HUGE collection of random crap). He ignores my raised eyebrow. We do have room, right now at least, and besides, he is on a mission. He is saving the books.

Things that are at yard sales are one step away from being thrown away. What doesn't get bought is sometimes taken to a thrift store, but there too it is only one step away from the garbage. Some people who hold yard sales just throw their leftovers away, and sometimes thrift stores have to clean out their stock. The secondhand market is a little like the pound. If you don't adopt that puppy/book/stationery, who will? This might be its last chance. You might be its last chance.

This is how Josh feels. He is saving the books. He will be the one-man last stand if he has to, in which case, he will definitely need a hooded robe.

It is noble, but frustrating. He has a soft spot for unusual books, particularly old ones. To him, their relative scarcity means they need the most saving. I don't mind him picking up early editions of Mark Twain, but he also buys old reference books. He buys gun manuals and electronics how-to's and early UFO conspiracy tomes. This is where he and I disagree. He says that this is important knowledge that may someday be useful. We need to preserve it. I say that on the odd chance that it will be useful, the internet will probably be working that day. I limit my cookbook purchases for the same reason that he does not buy books at the used book store. There are more recipes than I could ever cook available to me for free on the web, so there is little point in bothering with a book.

That is a difference between us. Josh thinks books are magic. I feel that the books themselves are not magic, but are merely containers of magic. So if I can get the same magic from another source, that is good enough for me. I do keep some books, because their magic is important enough for me to want to make sure that I can always get some of it whenever I need it.

As he runs out of shelf space, he seems to seeing my point. As he is cataloging his books in LibraryThing, he is coming to the conclusion the line between collector and hoarder is getting fine. While I am enjoying the fact that he is realizing that I was Right, I think he probably would have figured it out on his own, without me accumulating a bunch of Naggy Girlfriend demerits. As he catalogs, he culls. He keeps the literature and lets the comprehensive gun manuals go.

However, there is one ridiculous book that I have requested he keep, for the sake of symbolism. I'm not so good at symbols in literature, but I sure do like having them around the house. Someday, I will tell you about the Trust Spoon. For now, we'll talk about Canine Surgery. He got it at a yard sale. He almost did not buy it, because it was the kind of day where I was racking up a lot of Naggy Girlfriend demerits. But his resistance was futile from the beginning, even I could see that. So we brought home a book titled Canine Surgery. The actual book may be symbolic to us, but the title is not. It is about cutting open dogs for the purpose of curing what ails them. It is a veterinary reference book. I can think of no non-post-apocalyptic scenario where the information contained within this book would ever be useful to us. And I tell you, it is a completely typical example of the kind of book that he buys. This is what I mean when I tell you that Josh loves books. I mean that he buys books called Canine Surgery that are about actual canine surgery.

Do you understand now? Did the symbolism help, or maybe the imagery? When I tell you that Josh loves books, do you get how his love for books affects our lives? I hope so. Frankly, I've run out of writing devices, so if you don't get it now, maybe I lack the skill to explain. In which case, I'll just repeat: Josh loves books.

the puppet paradigm.

My mom once quit Netflix because she couldn't find anything to put on her queue. This is not a problem that I have experienced. Right now, my queue has 304 items on it. Any time I hear about a movie or TV show that sounds even remotely interesting, I add it to my queue. Because, why not? The trouble with this system is that by the time discs arrive in my mailbox, I've forgotten what made me put them on the list in the first place. So random things show up. Sometimes they are good, and sometimes they are not (but then again, sometimes I like the bad ones, too). I've also got the little Roku player, which allows me to stream Netflix to my TV. Random things from my queue show up in the instant viewing selection, and again, I'm always a little mystified as to how they got there.

Monday night, Josh and I decided it was time to knock out one of the things that had been on the instant viewing list for a long time, some sci-fi flick called Silent Running. I had no idea why I'd added it. The plot was about some biologist in space. Neither the title nor the actors rang a bell for me. Just some random movie on my TV, which is a lot like actual TV.

Josh remembered, though. This movie was supposedly hugely influential on our shared favorite TV show ever, Mystery Science Theatre 3000. That show is about a guy trapped in space who builds robot friends and then watches bad movies with them. Silent Running is about a guy who is trapped in space with some biodomes and programs robot drones to garden. So yeah, you can kinda see the resemblance. You can also see how the little drones might be early models for R2-D2. It was apparently also influential in the creation of Battlestar Galactica, Red Dwarf, and WALL-E. So. Important little sci-fi flick here.

As for the movie itself? Well, it would have been great if it had been about a third as long. There was some action in the beginning, but then later it's this guy and the robots, who do not talk. There is a lot of walking around and looking at plants while Joan Baez songs play. This movie suffers from serious 70s problems. The environmentalism message was really heavy-handed and I will never be able to hear Joan Baez again without picturing a guy in a space suit gardening. The special effects were good, though, and the model shots of the satellite were particularly well-done. It has a similar feel as 2001: A Space Odyssey, except where 2001 keeps you interested by being very subtle and confusing, this movie doesn't keep you all that interested. Surely there is a middle-ground between incomprehensible and predictable. We were glad we watched it, but we're not going to be doing it again. The thinking back on it has been much more enjoyable than the actual sitting through it. Good idea, poor execution.

What I really want to talk about are the drones, though. While Josh and I were watching the movie, during the boring Baez gardening scenes, we discussed whether they were puppets or costumes.

There is one episode of MST3K where they discuss something they call the "puppet paradigm," which is what makes the difference between a puppet and a costume. Some things are obviously puppets - Lamb Chop or Kermit. Those are just characters made of fabric being controlled by someone's hand up their back. But what about the characters which have a whole person inside them, for example, Chewbacca? There's a dude in there. At what point does something cease being a puppet and start being a costume? According to the robots of MST3K (who are themselves puppets), the difference is in the feet and the mouth. If something has feet that work and a mouth that is inarticulate, then that is a costume. Chewbacca has feet that move around with the actor inside, but he also has a mouth which moves when he "talks." Therefore, Chewbacca is a puppet. However, C3PO's mouth does not move when he talks, so he is a costume. Big Bird is a puppet; Barney is a costume.

You could talk about this for a long time, or at least I could. You don't care. I lost you somewhere back when you figured out this entry was going to be centered around an old, not very good, sci-fi movie.

Back to Silent Running. What are these little guys? Puppets or costumes?

Josh said puppet, and I said costume, though neither of us were confident in our responses. Obviously, they lacked articulate mouths and they did walk. They were human-controlled somehow, but how? Josh thought they were controlling it from behind, or from some angle where the robot could be between the operator and the camera. This seemed doubtful to me, as it would be hard for them to make it walk. I thought it was feasible that a smallish person could actually be in there, perhaps a child or little person. It would be admittedly cramped and likely awkward.

As it turns out, Wikipedia says that I was right. The drones are costumes. For double amputees. There are people in there, and they have no legs. Holy crap. Aren't you glad you read all the way to the end?

yard sale, sept. 18.

In terms of yard sales, this weekend has been the tale of two estate sales. 

I went to an estate sale on Friday, which is unusual.  It’s unusual that they have them on Fridays, and it’s unusual that I do any sort of saling on that day, too.  After all, I’m a working girl.  It started at 8, so I figured I would show up around then and have half an hour or so to shop before heading off to earn the money that allows me to shop so frivolously at the homes of others.

When I showed up at 8:15, there was a line outside.  I was worried that I had misread the start time, and that it really didn’t kick off until 9.  But no.  They were just letting people in a few at a time, because the house was so incredibly full of expensive and breakable things.  On hearing this, I rolled my eyes a little bit at what seemed like excessive caution.  However, while I was waiting, I heard a great crash from inside, as some poor sap bought over a hundred bucks worth of broken things.  I finally got inside, walked around carefully, but quickly, and then left without buying a thing.  True, I was hurrying so I wouldn’t be late for work, but also, I just don’t need any expensive breakables.  I really only like the cheap ones.  I am sure I could have gotten a great deal on some china, but if I bothered to spend $30 or more on a plate, I’d be afraid to ever use it.

The sale did have a lot of beautiful clocks.  The deceased was apparently a collector.  Apparently, that sale was only half of the stuff.  One of the people running the sale said they had a whole POD to go through yet.  I’ll probably go to that sale, too, just because that’s what I do.

Today, I went to another sale.  The house was in a very nice neighborhood on the golf course, so the people were probably just as rich as the ones who owned all the breakables.  But I liked this sale much, much more.  I wasn’t afraid to touch everything, which was good.  It was not as well organized, so shoppers had to dig through piles of stuff.  It’s a difference of preference, of course.  I’d rather dig and find treasures for cheap than have all the treasures arranged nicely and priced high.

The garage looked like any old regular garage.  It was dusty, disorganized, and chock full of crap.  It coulda been your garage.  The only difference is that everything was for sale.  I wasn’t sure I would find anything among the jars of nails and cleaning products, but off in a corner were these two crates.   

One says Sealtest and the other Borden.  They are old steel milk crates, very heavy, slightly rusty, and covered in cobwebs and leaves.  I paid a dollar apiece and felt like I was probably stealing them.  They are magnificent.  This is why I love shopping at yard sales.  Anyone can have a crate.  But I have an indestructible crate that is also a piece of American history for less than you would pay for a crappy plastic one.  Booyah!

You all know that I have a thing for lamps and bakeware, but did you know that I also collect maps?  I found a wonderful one today.  It’s a French map of the lower Mississippi River region as it was mapped by the explorer Hennepin in 1687 (more history about this map here).  I love these old maps.  Aside from the beautiful illustrations they include in the margins, it’s neat to see familiar landmasses divided in unfamiliar ways.  Most of the land is labeled as “La Louisiane.”  There are also big areas marked with Indian tribe names, and several notations that I cannot read, seeing as how they are in French.  It’s about 21” by 19” and with a nice wooden frame.  Five smackeroos and well worth it.

Here’s a close-up of one of the illustrations.  Wouldn’t that old Rand McNally atlas be much more interesting if it had nice drawings inside?

Josh told me he wanted a pizza stone.  Now he has one.  This one even comes with crayon marks.  I’m not sure how that will affect the taste of the pizza.  Maybe that’s the secret to a perfect crust – traces of nontoxic green wax on the bottom.

Finally, something that I’ve been wanting for a while.

This is a drawer from a letterpress box, which was used to hold letters for movable type.  I’ve seen bunches of these at estate sales and high-end flea markets, but they were always a little pricey.  At $10, this was still a bit spendy for me, though it’s still the cheapest I’ve ever seen one.  It’s also the first one I’ve seen that still has the drawer handle on it.  I’m not sure what I’ll do with it.  Frankly, I could hang it up as is and it would look smashing.  Obviously, those compartments are ready-made to hold something, but what?  Maybe it’s high time I started collecting thimbles.

Here are a couple of pictures from the disorganized estate sale.  Old papasan chair.  I’ve never seen one in this style, only the newish ones that have the wicker bases.  This one had a cast iron stand and a strong 70s vibe (or maybe that was the orange shag carpet in the room). 

A neat thing about estate sales is figuring out what the person did.  This guy was in the military, probably Air Force based on all the pictures of jets.  I also found a package containing a certificate for a Legion of Merit, which was pretty freaking cool.  I assume the actual medal was saved by the family.  Later in life, he was in real estate, as I figured out from this microfiche machine, which also came with a box of real estate records on slides.

I wonder if someone could figure out my job from my estate sale.  Other than the Intel chip jigsaw puzzles, I’m not sure I’m giving it away.

smells like newark.

There are two, I repeat, TWO, train stations called Newark. When I go to New York, I fly into Newark Liberty Airport and then take the NJ Transit train to the city. I've done this three times. And yet I'm beginning to suspect that I'm just not very good at trains. Last Friday, I was pretty sure I was getting on the right train. But then a couple of other people confused me with their questions. One of them asked me if this was New York. I thought that was a stupid question, because Newark does not look like New York. The other person asked me how to get to Newark. This is Newark, guy. But maybe he wanted the other Newark, because as I've already told you, there are two. But I didn't know that then.

One Newark station is for the airport. The other is just a plain train station, complete with one of those boards with the flipping signs and a big waiting room with long church-style pews.

I like to make fun of Newark. It's the only part of New Jersey I've ever been in, so I'm really making fun of New Jersey. Everybody likes to do that. We all have vague ideas that New Jersey smells bad and is full of toxic waste and greasy people. I've never noticed that to be true, but I've already explained that my experience with New Jersey has been limited to Newark, or rather, Newark Liberty International Airport. Last Friday, when we landed, the lady sitting next to me took in a deep breath and said, "Ah, smells like my childhood." I didn't want to be mean about her treasured memories or anything, but I couldn't help but ask, "Newark?" She said, "No, your fruity lip balm." Oh. I had forgotten that I'd even put it on. Then we talked about roller skating and perms and other aspects of being a child in the 80s. Still, I have nothing against Newark specifically or even New Jersey in general. But when one is from the South, it's best to make fun of the other places before they make fun of you.

I have to say, though, that after Sunday night, when I was trying to return to the South, I do have something against Newark now.

I was already stressed out from walking around Manhattan with my overnight bag in the rain, trying to find Penn Station. And then once I found the station and got on the train, I got off on the wrong station. I had not previously known that there were two Newark stations, probably because not all the trains that go to the airport go to that other Newark, and so my previous trips had just skipped that station altogether. I got off and found myself in a very attractive, non-airport, train station. Once I finally realized that some sort of mistake had been made, I went to the ticket counter. A lady in front of me, an aggressive and angry lady, had made the same mistake. She bickered with the ticket lady about what she needed to do. Ticket lady told her that she needed to wait for the next train to the airport, which would leave at 8:19. Angry Lady said that her flight left at 9:15, and wouldn't it be quicker to take a cab? Ticket Lady said no, not in the rain. There was more bickering, but then finally Angry Lady went to Track 4 to wait for the 8:19.

And then Tired and Docile Southern Lady went to the counter. Her flight left at 9:00. She was me. Ticket Lady told me the same thing, I nodded in resignation and went to wait at Track 4. I drank a whole 20 oz Coke, which was the first thing I'd had since breakfast. Oh yeah. Besides being stuck in a train station, wet and far from home, possibly about to miss my plane, I was hungry, too. I was past the point of hungry, where you are so hungry that you can't even eat. I blamed it on Newark.

I was feeling pretty low just then. I had finished my book. I had another, but it was wordy and my brain just wasn't up to the effort. I drank my coke and wished that I had someone to talk to who would distract me from my currently complicated relationship with time. Every minute, I was closer to getting on the train, but it was another minute that I spent not getting any closer to the plane. I am not the type to strike up conversations with strangers, but at that moment, I deeply wanted the comfort of another human being. A lady with a small daughter sat next to me. She looked too young to have a child. I tried to focus on that to give myself some perspective on my own miniscule troubles. Then I thought about the floods in Pakistan. None of this worked, of course, because I am a selfish person. I talked to Young Mother Lady about her daughter, which helped some.

The train came and took me to the airport station. It took like four minutes. Once there, I had to wait some more for the airport shuttle train to take me to the right terminal. Those trains supposedly come every five minutes, but I waited for probably ten. Again, I felt compelled to go up to a stranger and ask them to please talk to me.

The shuttle train came. It was probably 8:40 by then. I went over the evening in my mind as the shuttle took me to Terminal C. Somehow, the part that bothered me was that getting off the wrong station seemed like a perfectly reasonable mistake to make. I couldn't even really blame myself, and for some reason, I thought that having some momentary stupidity to point at would make me feel better about the prospect of spending the night in Newark.

I played the Worst Case Scenario game, which is something that uptight and responsible people do. I thought about likely things that could go wrong and then how I would deal with them. Clearly, there are plenty of awful possible Scenarios. I could develop acute appendicitis on the shuttle train or get arrested in the security checkpoint for carrying a pair of tweezers. So I'm really only interested in predictable, likely Scenarios. Obviously, the giant blinking marquee sign of a likely Scenario was that I would miss my flight. The corresponding action was that I would get a hotel room and then take a flight out in the morning. I could email my boss and tell him that I would be late, and everything would be fine. Usually, the Worst Case Scenario game gives me comfort, because it shows me that I can easily deal with the sort of things that might happen to one in Newark. I am free, white, and twenty-one. Also, I have a credit card and a smartphone. But that night, my spirits just refused to be lifted. I was so tired and hungry and in Newark.

A lady on the airport shuttle started asking the other passengers in the cabin for change. She first did a general plea to the group, and then she asked us each individually. "Miss? How about you? I'm semi-homeless right now." I shook my head silently, then looked away, which seems to be a popular choice in dealing with beggers. After she had asked each of us in turn, she began yelling at the group. She asked what she had ever done to us. She wondered why we were so mean. Then she speculated that we might each be the devil hisself. Again, I tried to find comfort in her situation. I may be stuck in Newark for the evening, but at least I am not begging on the shuttle. Again, it did not work.

Finally, we arrived at Terminal C, and I readied myself to sprint. On the narrow escalator, I was behind Begging Lady, who had become Crazy Yelling Lady. She yelled that no one had better touch her stuff, that she went to school and earned that stuff, it was hers. I was too busy preparing my bags for a hard run to pay her mind.

I got to security at 9:50. Continental has a system where you can call up your boarding pass on your smartphone. I hadn't planned on doing that, being a little suspicious of using a boarding pass that I could not hold in my hands. But that was before I got off at the wrong Newark. Now, as I ran full tilt to Security Checkpoint 3, I embraced the new technology. I got through the short security line, tweezers and all, and did another sprint to gate C103. When I arrived, panting, the plane wasn't even boarding, and the schedule departure time now said 9:17. But I was there. I had made it. I ate a Snickers and tried to untangle to Newark-induced knot in my stomach.

Two hours later, I landed in Raleigh. And just as badly as I had felt in Newark, when even the floods in Pakistan could not cheer me up, once in North Carolina, I felt elated. I wanted to kiss every tree. I sang a made-up song to my car as I walked through the parking deck. I didn't even care about the parking fees, which were higher than I expected. I drove home. Upon entering my front door, I dumped my bags and left them where they landed, while I received the much-needed human comfort I had desired in the form of an extended hug from my sweet man. Then he held me while I told him how much I hated Newark.