Holla’ for Challah!

Holy crap, I made challah and it doesn’t suck. Thank you Joy of Cooking! The fork is for scale. This thing turned out way bigger than I thought it would. Recipe says to bake 30-35 mins., but it could have been taken out after 20 mins. since our oven tends to be a bit hot. Maybe I’ll finally learn that now. But it’s good, and it sure looks nice, doesn’t it? Not bad for a first go.

More Thrifty Fun

Look at this DIY embroidery stand we just made! Materials include an IKEA lamp we’ve had forever and which was sort of broken anyway (and from which we extracted the still-functional electrical components), a 7/8″ dowel, a nifty clamp from the hardware store, and two zip ties. We’ll trim the zip ties and finish the dowel with some stain and varnish so it looks a bit more civilized. Total cost in new materials (things we bought specifically for this project) was about $15. They sell things like this for between $250 and $275 new. How great is that!?

Now they make you stop going

Woot! I’m a Ph.D., it’s official. Had a great time in Chicago with friends and family and we really lucked-out on the weather with rain and wind the day before and the day after the ceremony, but beautiful blue sky and sun on the day of. I wasn’t expecting to be so affected by the ceremony, but I have to admit I was pretty darn proud to be there. Thanks everybody who was there and helped coordinate family and events during a very busy weekend.

 

Hillary Clinton Said What?

According to CNN, regarding Clinton’s meeting in China:

“Human rights cannot interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crises,” Clinton said.

I’m not going to get all political here, but what? I’m waiting for Clinton to reach behind her ear, pull off the elaborate latex mask she’s wearing and reveal herself as Donald Rumsfeld. It’s all human rights, people!

December 30, 2008

Well, I fell off the edge of the blogosphere, but I’m back now. We had a kitty medical crisis here between Dec. 25 and Dec.29. Our little fuzz bucket was having some trouble with crystals in his UT, but I won’t go into the gory details. He (and we) were up all night on Friday night and Saturday night, and we made two trips to the emergency vet and one trip to the normal vet. Now he’s on a special diet, antibiotics, and subcutaneous fluids (although he is drinking on his own now).

So, I guess now we know why the cosmos decreed that we not go to Oregon for Christmas, because then we wouldn’t have been here, and it’s possible that he could have become blocked, which is potentially fatal. My mom always used to say that she believed there was a reason for everything, which is as close as she ever got, I think, to a religion. The longer I live, the more I believe it.

Today, after two full nights of sleep (and parts of two days, too), I’m finally starting to feel better from my forced all-nighters. I’ve never been good at staying up all night. Even in college and grad school, the latest I ever made it was 2 am. Add the stress of a sick kitty into all that, and it was quite a trying ordeal. Oh, and my wife got a cold in the middle of it all, too, so she’s been feeling like crap on top of everything. Some vacation this turned out to be. Anyway, we’re all okay now (I hope) and back to some semblance of normalcy. Let’s see how long that lasts.

Fun is Fun

I rode my first roller coaster today. I’d been on small county-fair-style roller coasters as a kid, but they didn’t really count. This one was pretty small, too, in comparison to some of the monsters, but it had the benefit of being a wooden roller coaster, and also quite a historic one. Part of the fun, honestly, was marveling at the ability of the entirely wooden structure to support the speed and weight of the cars. The “how do things work” part of me enjoyed trying to figure out how all the joins and joints and bolts and such worked as I sped past at high velocity. It was great fun. We went twice. It’s not always easy to remember how to just plain have fun as an adult. There are so many things to spend time worrying about, or at least stewing about, that a few moments of just plain crazy fun can seem pretty hard to come by.

My wife took a picture of me just before the cars started, trying to capture my moment of boyish enthusiasm. I think she got it.

 

Here are some photos of the “Giant Dipper’s” wooden infrastructure. Very cool.

Get to Work!

In an effort to keep myself a bit more honest, and to hold myself accountable for what I actually get done everyday, I’m going to try keeping a running journal of what I do and do not get done, both “life” stuff and “work” stuff.  Here’s today’s (Monday 8/18/08):

Done:

Weekly grocery shopping

Inspect slow bathroom drain

Miscellaneous household chores

Worked on old bicycle restoration

Wrote a blog post (another one, not this one)

Finished reading a book for work

Started reading/revising a chapter of my dissertation

Not Done:

Finish writing Journal Article #1

Finish writing Journal Article #2

Goals for Tomorrow: See Above