Category: Uncategorized

I’m doing this blogging A to Z thing. Today is U.

I tried to make this:

for dinner last night. It didn’t go well. I wish I’d taken a picture, it looked so awful.

I don’t have the right kind of pan and I had the heat up too high, so the water boiled off before the pasta was cooked through. I didn’t realize that, so I dished it up and served it.

My daughter took one bite, said it tasted good, but the pasta was really al dente. I took one bite and declared it inedible. We were seated side-by-side at the breakfast bar in my kitchen during this exchange. It felt a little like we were judges on “Chopped.”

And I had committed the cardinal sin – I failed to taste the food before I put it out.

I tried to salvage it by dumping it all back in the pot and adding water. Things went from bad to worse. More to the point – to mush.

So we did the only sensible thing. We ordered Chinese.

I’m a pretty good cook, but it’s good to recognize when things have gone completely wrong and just stop. This recipe, I will try again, and it will probably turn out fine.

Some things I’ve given up on – either because I just didn’t like them enough to keep trying, or in one case, because no matter what I tried, it flopped.

I cannot roast a chicken. I love roast chicken – it’s one of my favorite foods. But every time I’ve tried it, it’s been an unmitigated disaster. Undercooked, overcooked, dried out, flavorless – think of a way to screw up chicken and I’ve probably done it. I’ve given up.

The mistakes in the kitchen aren’t all bad though.

I put ground sausage in meatloaf once because I had it in the house. Now it’s part of the recipe. Another excellent option based on what I had in the house is just ground beef, an egg, a jar of salsa, and some bread crumbs.

I made chocolate chip cookies with coarse kosher salt instead of table salt once. They had the sort of sweet and salty thing you get from salted caramel. Awesome.

I had no vanilla, so substituted bourbon in a banana bread. That’s part of the recipe now.

Actually, I’ve discovered bourbon is a pretty good addition to a lot of things in the kitchen – especially the cook.

I’m doing this blogging A to Z thing. Today is T.

Tempora mutantur is a Latin adage that dates to the Protestant Reformation. It translates to times change.

A longer version is Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. 

Times change and we change with them.

500-ish years ago, the Catholic Church held enormous power in Europe. Martin Luther, protesting corruption in the church, nailed his objections to the door, and Protestantism was born.

That’s the incredibly short and not really accurate version. There were many factors that contributed to the Protestant Reformation. Luther wasn’t alone in his call for change and it wasn’t just corruption in the Church they objected to.

There was a lot going on at the time, including advances in scientific knowledge, and thanks to a little thing called the printing press, dissemination of that knowledge.

Times were changing, and reformers wanted to change with them. Demanded to change with them. Demanded that the Church recognize the world as it was and evolve. And when the Church didn’t, they started their own.

Flash forward to 2016 and we have people in positions of power denying science and refusing knowledge in the name of religion, desperately clinging to the past, and calling it conservatism.

Ironically, some of these people belong to the same religions that emerged when the Catholic Church refused to budge.

Tempora mutantur. Times change. We all need to change with them.

I’m doing this blogging A to Z thing. Today is S.

Social media in general sort of surprises me.

People are reading this blog that didn’t really exist until a few weeks ago. That’s kind of cool.

My Instagram account has a bunch of artsy-fartsy pictures of shopping carts. It’s an inside joke between my daughter and me and I forget that other people can – and do – see my Instagram account. I’m surprised when people ask about it.

Facebook has been a source of many surprises – both good and bad. Tonight’s banana bread, for instance, got much more of a response than I would have expected.

A few years ago, I was surprised to see a cartoon depicting violence against immigrants as something to laugh at posted on a friend’s Facebook. We had words.

The other night, I quoted something I saw on someone else’s Facebook page that clearly struck a nerve with a few people. This was the post:

You know how sometimes you’ll see a comment in a thread from someone you knew a long time ago, and you think “Wow, I haven’t thought about that person since the 80s. I wonder what they’re up to,” and then you click their name?

Did that earlier and found this gem:
“Gays are like 3 or 4 percent of the population. Why should the rest of us have to suffer so they can get everything they want?”

Right, because that’s what’s happening. Gays are getting EVERYTHING they want. And the rest of the world is SUFFERING because of it.

And then you shake your head and smile because reunions aren’t mandatory.

I don’t know what I expected, but I got a good number of comments from people who were clearly appalled.

The 80s was high school and college for me, and I have great – really great – memories of both. But I also very distinctly remember that homophobia was the norm, not the exception. So hearing that someone I knew back then takes issue with gay people – unfortunately not a surprise.

The person in question was a friend of a friend of a friend; someone I knew in passing. Their ignorance and homophobia was only surprising in that my vague memories were of someone generally nice. But I didn’t know them very well, so for all I know, they may have always felt that way. I kind of hope they did. I’d rather think of someone not keeping up than moving in the wrong direction.

Before I had an iPod or a phone that stored thousands of songs, I kept about a dozen CDs at the office and just kept them in rotation. Roseanne Cash’s Rules of Travel was in heavier rotation than the others.

Now that I do have a phone that stores most of my music, and everything else is up in the cloud so I can download and listen to it whenever I want, these songs are still in heavy rotation, as they’re on several playlists. Most albums – even really great ones – have one or two tracks I’m sort of ambivalent about. I love every track on this record.

Roseanne Cash is a very successful singer/songwriter. Critics love her. She’s won multiple Grammys. She’s in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. She’s had multiple gold records and 11 number 1 Country hits. She’s also written and edited books, contributed to magazines, and collaborated with everyone from her father, Johnny Cash, to Stephen King.

This was her first recording of new music in seven years due to health issues, and included duets with Sheryl Crowe, Steve Earle, and her father, Johnny Cash. It’s full of songs about love – mostly love gone wrong. She has a fantastic melancholy to her voice that’s on full effect here.

The duet with Johnny Cash, a song called “September When it Comes” is a reflection on mortality.

“So when the shadows link them,
And burn away the clouds.
They will fly me, like an angel,
To a place where I can rest.
When this begins, I’ll let you know,
September when it comes.”

Every good country record has to have at least one song that makes you cry. The record was released in March 2003. Johnny Cash died that September.

I’m doing this blogging A to Z thing. Today is Q.

When I started driving, seat belts had just been made mandatory, “regular” gas had lead in it, rear-wheel drive was the norm, and those triangular windows at the fronts of the front doors (and sometimes the backs of the back doors) opened. We called them vents, but in most cars now they don’t open, so they’re not really vents anymore. The proper name is quarter lights.

That’s just a random fact I happen to know. I’m not really a car guy. For me, cars are just transportation.

What I want out of a car is safe, reliable transportation. And because I drive about 100 miles most days, good mileage. I’d pay extra for better cargo space or all wheel drive. Leather seats? Heated seats? Sun roof? Not so much.

Not counting the SUV I drove for a few years, adjusted for inflation, I’ve spent about the same amount of money on most of the cars I’ve owned.

But auto innovation being what it is, each one had bells and whistles the previous one didn’t.

10 years ago, power windows only came with the higher trim levels – for an extra grand or more. Five years later, they were standard equipment even on base level vehicles. My latest car, which is the base level, has power windows, multiple power outlets, USB and bluetooth connections, touch screen dashboard, and steering wheel controls. And voice control for pete’s sake.

And all that stuff is great.

But for all the improvements, I miss some of the old features. I miss full-size spares. And bench seats. And rear leg room.

And I miss quarter lights that opened (aka vent windows). Cars have better ventilation systems now, which sort of makes those vents unnecessary, but sometimes you just want that little bit of fresh air vent windows provided.

I’m doing this blogging A to Z thing. Today is P.

I have a squirrel in the attic. Which sounds like it should be a euphemism for something, like bats in the belfry. But it’s not. I just have a squirrel in the attic.

Something no one tells you when you move to the country…critters get into your house.

Twice I’ve had to chase bats out. They stayed out. Years passed between incidents.

Cave crickets are a perennial issue. Bug spray around the perimeter handles that.

Ants. Traps.

Field mice. Steel wool in every hole.

Wasps. Called an exterminator.

Flying squirrel. That was an adventure. Actually woke up with it sitting on my chest one morning. Got the exterminator in for that one too. Rat trap got him.

Now I have a plain gray squirrel in the attic. I bought Critter Ridder animal repellent from Havahart and spread that around the attic. And I put the main overhead light on a motion sensor and put up some motion sensor night lights. I’m hoping between the repellent and the lights going on and off, it’ll scare him off.

Wish me luck.

I’m doing this blogging A to Z thing. Today is O.

For a few years I’ve been receiving emails from people trying to sell me contact lists. Ironically, I don’t need contact lists, and yet, there I am, on one, probably many, lists of people who do.

Generally, I just ignore or delete junk email but the list people were myriad and persistent. So I clicked every tiny, pale gray, barely legible link to opt out of receiving further correspondence, but to no avail.

I would stop receiving messages from one email address, then immediately start receiving them from another. And their ads started showing up on every Web site I visited. It was like severing the head of a hydra and having 2 show up to replace it.

Here’s the thing – they’re in the business of selling verified email addresses. And what better way to verify an email address than to receive a response from it? Even if the response is “stop bothering me.”

I don’t want to malign an entire industry. There are probably many companies out there in the list business who take leave-me-alone requests seriously. But I never hear from them – they’re working off better lists.

So it appears simply ignoring the unsolicited emails is the way to go. Usually.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been stalked by some guy named Brian trying to sell me unspecified digital marketing services. I figured opting out would be as effective as it was with the list people, so I’ve been ignoring him.

Every few days I get a follow-up trying to set up a call. There’s no substance – just lots of buzzwords like “scaling online acquisition opportunities.” But each message has all the previous emails attached, as if to remind me how long I’ve been ignoring him.

On the fourth message, he started getting testy “A simple no not interested will suffice.”  Will it, Brian? I suspect not.

Today was message six, which included the phrase “I’ve done something to offend you.”

I’m wondering how long this will continue.

I’m doing this blogging A to Z thing. Today is N.

Saturday night – looking for something to watch on Netflix. Among the current Top Picks for Stephen:

• Little Dead Riding Hood – She suffered a violent and bloody death. Now she’s back sporting the same pointy teeth and deadly claws as her killer.
• # Horror – A bunch of cyberbullying mean girls in a house in the woods. Easy pickings for a deranged killer.
• Uncaged – He thought wearing a camera at night would help solve his sleepwalking problem. Instead he records a living nightmare.
• Fright Night 2 – High schoolers Charley and Ed must stop a sexy vampire’s chilling plan to bathe in the blood of a “new moon virgin” — who happens to be Charley’s ex.

There’s a bunch of good stuff too, but I think I’m going to have to watch a whole lot of critically acclaimed films to get Netflix to forget I once watched a turkey called Final Girl.

I’m doing this blogging A to Z thing. Today is M.

I was in Target earlier with my daughter; we saw Chex muddy buddies and decided to make our own. Because we needed 9 cups of muddy buddies.

Muddy buddies ingredients:

• 9 cups Rice Chex™, Corn Chex™ or Chocolate Chex™ cereal (or combination) we went with corn
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup butter or margarine
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Whenever I make anything out of the ordinary, I wind up buying most of the ingredients, hoping I’ll use the rest in something else before they go bad. I had the peanut butter, butter, and vanilla in the house; the rest I had to buy. But at least it’s all stuff I’ll use.

Can’t say the same for the 56 bucks worth of spices I bought for chicken tikka masala last weekend. But it was totally worth it.