MM: Carolers, Award, Recipes
Well, my first performance with Fireside Carolers went as well as I could’ve hoped. We did our free concert at the church that hosts our rehearsals, and I didn’t flub anything in a way that could’ve been noticed. The Fair Elaine snapped a picture of me singing, looking like I was maybe a wee bit tentative. Guilty. (She also posted some pictures from our Thanksgiving Weekend on her blog.)
Next weekend I get my first real Carolers experience, as I’ll be going out in an octet on Friday and Saturday. Today’s singing actually gave me a bit of a confidence boost.
Oh, and I think I looked pretty good in my tux. Is it weird that I have a tuxedo, but don’t own even so much as a sport jacket?
BTW, for anyone needing a budget tuxedo and living in or around Portland, head over to Mr. Formal Clearance Center on SE 7th in Portland.
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So, it’s weird enough having readers of my blog whom I don’t personally know. (Like the time the other Seth Heasley’s mom dropped by.)
It’s even stranger when they like my writing enough to lob an award at me. Yes, it’s true. My Orthodox reader, DebD (of Deb on the Run), has awarded me with the Superior Scribbler award.
It’s both an award and a meme. I don’t do much meme-ing, because I’ve just gotta be meme…heh. But I’ll do my best here. First, the rules:
- Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.
- Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.
- Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to This Post, which explains The Award.
- Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we'll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!
- Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.
I’m fine with all these steps except for the first one. Because I simply don’t have that many Bloggy Friends that I don’t know personally. And I’d feel funny linking them, like there was a conflict of interest. So I feel that I should choose from people I’ve found online and started following.
But I haven’t done all that much of that. I’m more of a window shopper, and I know it’s wrong and all, but I click through to a lot of book review posts from Semicolon Blog’s Saturday Book Reviews, and I haven’t managed to look back at many of the authors’ non-book-review work. Except for DebD’s, and that’s because she’s posted interesting comments on my Theology Thursday ramblings.
In short, I know I must mend my ways and be a better blog commenter/follower.
But I’ll attempt to fulfill at least the spirit of the meme. I’m not planning on notifying all these folks, because a couple of them are already Big Time, so why would they care what I think?
JonV at Into the Darkness. I’ve known him since he was just a pup (Read: when he was twelve and not yet taller than me. And when he called me Mr. Heasley). Now he’s doing engineering work for the Mennonite Central Committee in Mozambique, and writing extremely verbose posts about his life there. I know I’m not really entitled to be proud of him, but I was the worship leader for the youth program way back then… (Yes, I know him personally, but he’s in Africa!!!)
Apostrophe Abuse. I’ve written quite a bit about the signs of the Apostrolypse on this here blog. But Apostrophe Abuse has pages and pages of evidence. It’s serious, folks.
Keith Law at Meadow Party. Baseball writer, food critic, book reviewer. Good work if you can get it (though I think he mostly gets paid for the baseball stuff). He inspires me to read more, and I already feel like I read a lot.
Amos at The Amateur Entymologist and Outside the Camp. His musings on English, as a non-native speaker, are always interesting. And while I don’t agree with his Calvinism, I still enjoy his theology thoughts on Outside the Camp. (BTW, I initially found him while searching “A While vs. Awhile”.)
Michael Brooks at Aetherwatch. I very much enjoyed his book, Thirteen Things that Don’t Make Sense last year. On his blog, he posts other such weirdities and his general musings.
Hey, I managed five awards! Whee!
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We had a great Thanksgiving feast, with actually a lot of vegetables. We had Marinated Vegetable Salad, which is a favorite of mine, and Roasted Carrots, Asparagus, and Brussels Sprouts.
Yes, Brussels Sprouts. Seriously. Actually, I’ve always liked them, but after reading about how much my niece and nephews enjoyed them, we had to try the recipe.
It’s a deep, dark, secret. Very complicated.
(Toss the veggies in olive oil and sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. Bake at 400-ish until done. Half-hour or so. Longer for the carrots, shorter for the asparagus.)
Yes, I used the word Recipes up in my title, so I should give a couple more away.
My sister made this killer Sweet Potato and Apple Casserole at Christmas last year, so we had to try it. (Layer sliced sweet potatoes with thinly sliced Granny Smith Apples, sprinkle some pecans over it, add some butter, orange juice, and brown sugar, and dust with cinnamon. Bake at 400-ish and take it out before it burns. Yes, it was a close call but still delicious.)
Well, we had leftovers of that dish, so I made Leftover Sweet Potato Casserole Pancakes!!!!
I threw the leftovers in the food processor (probably one and a half cups total after pureeing), then mixed in about a cup and a half of flour, a couple of eggs, a cup or so of soymilk, a tablespoon of baking powder, a dash of salt, and some orange zest, and threw it on the griddle.
Awesome! BTW, my opinions of apple desserts are well known and acknowledged by all as wrong. (Weirdly, they’re recorded in that post Other Seth’s mom commented on.)
But the Sweet Potato and Apple Casserole is seriously good, and the pancakes were, as My Son the Breakfast Appetite would say, “ridiclius.” Unfortunately, it only made eleven small pancakes, which is just not enough for five people including the Breakfast Appetite.
(BTW, I’ve been thinking I need a nickname for the Offspring, and I think I have it. The Breakfast Appetite just fits so perfectly. Or maybe The One Whose Spiritual Gift is Breakfast Eating. Or just the Breakfast Eater. Or Ethan the Breakfast Eater. Or maybe a Dances with Wolves-style name like Eats Many Pancakes. Votes? Suggestions?)
We also made from-the-hip Turkey Soup, using the leftover giblet stock and pan drippings that I didn’t turn into the world’s greatest gravy in the world. Yes, it’s perfectly acceptable to be redundant when talking about gravy. Especially when you’re a semi-veg family.
(Oh, the Turkey Soup recipe. Some of the amounts are approximate.)
- Some Turkey, chopped.
- A few carrots, chopped.
- Some celery, chopped.
- Some potatoes, chopped.
- An onion, executed in a food processor until dead, then kept on bread and water for two weeks, then beaten roundly with sticks. Please, someone get my clumsy literary reference…
- Garlic, a truckload, to taste.
- Leftover green beans (yes, we had those, too), chopped
- Spices of various kinds. One or more of the bay/basil/marjoram/thyme category.
Sauté the veggies in olive oil until you stop. Then add liquids. Like stock. Or gravy. Or a partial box of Pacific Foods Chicken Broth. (Add leftover mashed potatoes if you somehow managed to run out of gravy before potatoes. It’ll thicken the soup nicely.)
Add fresh cracked pepper and consume with leftover Non-Hockey-Puck Rolls.
MM: Baseball, Fair, LEGO Scrambler, Forty!
Before I begin, I’d like to point out that I’m writing this from within Windows Live Writer which, despite being a Microsoft Product, is fairly cool. It made adding images and videos much easier than the normal Wordpress browser interface.
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Ethan and I caught a Portland Beavers baseball game on Friday, thanks to the Hillsboro Library Summer Reading Program (which got us two tickets for a total of $8).
The bad news is the Beavers got shellacked 14-1. The good news is that we enjoyed the game with the K Boys:
And the other good news is that Ethan’s hopes and dreams were all fulfilled when I GOT HIM A FOUL BALL!!!! No, I didn’t catch it, because it didn’t have the velocity to make it all the way to us out in Section 122 (actually, we may have been in 121 due to fairly low attendance). One of the seats in the section adjacent to us actually caught the ball quite nicely for us.
So for anyone looking to catch a cheap game, section 122 is part of General Admission (here’s the whole seating map), and it’s only $8 per seat. It’s even cheaper when the Library chips in a free seat for the kid. And it’s possible to get a foul ball for your young baseball fan.
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It was the weekend of the K Boys for us, because we also took in the sights and sounds of the Washington County Fair with them on Saturday. Colin and I tried to browbeat the boys into riding the Kiddie Roller Coaster, but to no avail (we weren’t really that hard on them, and in Tim’s defense, he just needed a partner and he’d have done it).
After that failure and a visit to the Funhouse, I asked, “Who’s going on the Scrambler with me?” Peter was all over it and convinced Ethan to go with him. I was extremely impressed that they both went for it. I even have video (Tim wanted to do some event announcing, but clearly needed a cue card):
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Ethan, of course, proceeded to create a LEGO Scrambler. Here he is demonstrating it:
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My yearly reading total has now reached forty!!! I know this can sound like a large number, but keep in mind that I post my book reviews on a page where many of the other posters review five or six per week. And I happen to know a certain Mr. Kuskie who read ten books in July.
So I’m not particularly fast, but I’m consistent. I’m a marathon reader.
MMM: Baseball, Birkenstocks, Bread, Book Sale, Reading, Despereaux
I ran out of B-words for the subject line, but I think four is more than sufficient to fill my alliteration-quotient for the week.
Well, our baseball team has officially had two games, and they're definitely easier than practices. Because we do the same thing every time. Yes, I have to figure out where to play the kids, and what order to bat them in, but that's really no biggie. The games have just been fun so far.
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As we can now expect to be seeing some sunnier weather on a more regular-ish basis, I got myself some new Birkenstocks from Birkenstockcentral.com. Once again I got Milanos, because I like the heel strap. The one thing I did change was the material. I went with Birko-Flor. It's a synthetic, "leather-like" material, and I'm actually diggin' it. I'm not doing it to spare a cow its hide, though. They were on sale, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to try something new. I actually like how soft the underside of the straps are. Very comfy. And they're already starting to break-in so it's not so much like walking on manhole covers.
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I went bread-crazy this weekend. Well, Sunday anyway. We had a freezer full of bananas, so I made some banana bread. I made one "normal" Banana Walnut loaf, and one Coconut Banana Bread with Lime Glaze. Yeah, it's every bit as good as it sounds. Incredible, actually. And I'm actually surprised it survived the night. But now I can inform you that it goes really well with Sleepy Monk Monastery Blend coffee.
I also made my own croutons for my normal entirely-too-large-salads I have for lunch. I went with Alton Brown's recipe from his "Hail Caesar Salad" show. I likes me some croutons.
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The Hillsboro Main Library (on Brookwood) is having their biannual Book Sale, and I got four really nice hardcovers. I found Timothy Zahn's Conqueror series (so, dad, you can keep that copy of Conqueror's Pride) and Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch, which I'll read if I ever get through with my current library backlog.
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And on the subject of that backlog, my reading has been coming along nicely lately. I'm actually doing something I normally don't: reading two books at a time. Oh, it's true, I've generally got four or five books I'm juggling, but there's nearly always just one that I'm really working on. The others just come into things when I misplace the One or when I'm reading to Ethan.
I should be finishing both books this week, I think. So look for the reviews next Monday Morning. The titles? I'll give you a hint (if you don't want to just look at My Reading Lists): electricity and geopolitics.
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It's really feast or famine on MMM lately. Nothing last week, and now more than four hundred words this week. Anyway, I did manage to finish a book. I read Ethan The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread, by Kate DiCamillo, and he loved it. Never wanted to stop reading it. So now we'll have to pick up the movie and give it a look.
MMM: Busy, Sore, Blood
Things have been really busy lately. I've had to pretty much withdraw from singing at church, except for the low-time-commitment Sunday evening service. If I added in a Thursday rehearsal, I'd basically have something going after work every day but Friday.
Baseball is tending to consume my thoughts these days. And not watching baseball (to which there is no downside), but the coaching stuff. On the bright side, we've only got two practices left before games start. I'm hoping that games will be easier. Allow me that hope for now. I'll let you know in a week or so how silly the hope was.
My reading progress has been slow, as has my blogging. I skipped Theology Thursday for the first time in quite a stretch. If I'd had strong feelings about a topic, I might've still written it, but I came up empty and was okay with that. I started a Foney Friday but didn't get to finish it. And I've been completely neglecting the Handwasher Blog. (Although I do think the last post was awesome enough to last a couple of weeks.)
I did manage to finish a book I was reading to Ethan, but I've skipped my weekend New Testament reading for two weeks in a row now. Need to get back on that, or I'll have more trouble getting through it twice. And that would just be the end of the world.
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And then there's the tear-down-the-roof-over-the-patio-and-replace-it project. It's surprising how sore one can get from crawling around on hands and knees while trying not to put much weight on any one spot on the roof. I'm curious to see how my joints feel while running tomorrow.
My last run was lousy, and I blame it on having donated blood the day before.
By the way, have I nagged my loyal legions of readers lately to donate blood? It's really not a big deal. My pint-count is now forty-two! I'm not proud of it or anything. Forty-two. Did I mention that?
There...I did an actual blog post. And it looks a bit whiny to me. Oh well. Baby steps.
MMM: Associate, Comment?, Ten Books, Go Mariners!!!!
Well, I took a week off from finishing books, and now I'm back. Actually, I finished two, but only one really warrants any kind of review (the other was Hardy Boys #2).
I've long been a fan of John Grisham's legal thrillers, and I thought his non-fiction The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town was one of the best books I read in 2007. Unfortunately, Grisham seems to have lost his fastball, as evidenced by his last few fiction titles.
Not that The Associate was a bad book. I read it in only a couple of days, so it's not like it was boring. Indeed, I found it really quite engaging. The story of the main character being blackmailed into corporate espionage had a visceral feel to it. I really identified with his situation. True, there was a sidebar (you might say filler) about one of the protagonist's friends' experiences in detox, but even that was brought around and made somewhat relevant to the story eventually.
No, the problem was the ending. Grisham built up suspense and intrigue nicely, only to let it drop and shatter on the floor. It's almost like he felt he needed to challenge Michael Crichton for lamest ending of a book (a constant frustration with the late Mr. Crichton's work).
And here I was ready to give a near-glowing-endorsement of it. But then I finished it. Bummer.
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Just a blogging curiosity...is a 5000 word comment really a comment? I've got one sitting in my moderation queue. And it's...interesting.
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Have I mentioned I need a library intervention? I now have twelve books checked out. True, the Grisham and the Hardy Boys will go back today, and I've finished one of the baseball coaching books and am just keeping it for reference, and I have three others I'm just thumbing through, looking for ideas, and three of the other books I've yet to even thumb through. But still. I'm out of control. So the breakdown is this:
Currently reading - 2
Currently using in some capacity - 3
Started or thumbed through, but postponed for now - 2
Waiting for a first look - 3
Pending return to the library - 2
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Felix Hernandez is starting the first game of the season for the M's against that team from Minnesocold. Go Mariners!!!
Ethan and I will be at baseball practice, so we'll have to catch it on DVR.
Foney Fridays: This Post Unintentionally Written
It's not going to happen this week.
The fact is, I'm not coming up with any quality snark at the moment. True, I had a cool idea about a man failing his emissions test, but his car passing it (hint: the emissions weren't coming from the car). I even had a good title: Sins of Emission. Didn't take. I gave it three tries, and it now lies dead in my Drafts. (I even get how "drafts" is really ironic.)
There was also one I thought of about a man trying to spend his way out of debt. And it was just not going to be political or anything!! Would government ever do something like that? Please. So that didn't work. How could it?
I even discovered the existence of Kitty Wigs (http://www.kittywigs.com/). You'd think I could use that. Nope. Nothing. Apocatlypse. How great a word is that? Cats take over the world in response to the wigs. How wouldn't that work? And yet I got 250 words into it and pulled the plug.
I'm just trying to be real here while writing under a pseudonym. In baseball terms, I've lost my fastball. And I'm not throwing again until there's some heat on it. I think I need a satirical vacation. So maybe I'll just head over to my place and hang for a while. Oh, I'll be back sooner or later, but I think I just need a break from the pressure of these deadlines and the fame and fortune. Well, it's mostly the deadlines. The others would be nice-to-haves.
Anybody want to guest author a Foney Friday? Take my topics. Make them work. I'm taking a break until the Snark Muse visits again.
Artificially Yours,
O.Handwasher
Foney Fridays: Snarkness Falls
Local Blogger Experiencing Snark Deficiency
HILLSBORO, OR -- A local blogger, read by vast numbers of several people, is having trouble channeling his inner sarcastic jerk. Said the man, "I'm just having a hard time writing satire these days. I just hope nobody thinks I've gone soft."
It's going on a month now since Mr. Handwasher published anything even remotely snarky, and he hopes that fans of his satire aren't getting too anxious.
"Rest assured, I've got snark in me still," said Handwasher, "and I'll do something eventually. I wanted to write something mean about the stupidity of Daylight Saving Time, but nothing worked out. Still, the concept is somewhat self-mocking."
In lieu of a satirical post this week, Mr. Handwasher asks you, his legion of loyal readers who probably couldn't fill an elevator, to think some snarky thoughts about Daylight Saving Time, or anything else that seems to invite snarky thoughts. And he'd also like to know if anyone else knew that it's "Saving" time, and not "Savings" time. Because he totally didn't know that.
Source: O.Handwasher, who seriously might write something next week
MMM Addendum: Subscribe to Comments
Having read about that nifty-keen, newfangled contraption known as "Subscribe to Comments" on Tyler's blog, I decided to investigate whether it was available on mine. That answer was no. However, a Heasley never gives up, and I found a plugin for Wordpress.org users (Wordpress.com has the feature standard). So, now it's there. Use it if you wish.
(BTW, to use it, just click ".")