Collateral Bloggage

On Halloween, I went to Insomnia Coffee Company with E, J, and J for post-Indian-food-coffee.  Okay, so let me just take a moment to inform you that Insomnia is awesome.  Go there.  It’s just so much better than Starbuck’s.  No comparison.

And if you don’t like coffee, try an Aldretea.  It’s like a latte, but with brewed tea instead of coffee.  Add a little honey to it and it’s an absolute treat.  Plus, the owners are awesome.  Support the local guy (and guy and gal).  Seriously.  Go!

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Anyway, it was Halloween.  Thus, one of the main coffee-jerkers was dressed up.  We couldn’t place his outfit.  He had on white overalls and big-ole-shop-goggles, looking for all the world like a butcher or crime-scene-cleaner-upper.  He informed us he was Dr. Horrible.  One of our group was familiar with the character and sent out a link for our viewing pleasure.

Dr. Horrible is hilarious and surprisingly good (who knew Neil Patrick Harris could sing that well?).  The full name is Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and it was created by Joss Whedon during the Writer’s Strike.  All I can say is, I want more!  That’s the trouble with it.  If you go watch the video, it’s three fourteen-minute “episodes.”  And then it’s done.  And now I’m sad.

Oh, and I suppose I should mention it’s not rated G, but it’s clean enough for American TV.  Make of that what you will.

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Perhaps you’d expect to see this announcement over at the Handwasher Blog, but Mr. Handwasher and I agreed that if less is more, imagine how much more more could be!  So, you may see this in two places.  The announcement?  October 15th.  Save the date.  It’s Global Handwashing Day!!!

Now, I realize that the “holiday” is meant to bring awareness and improved cleansing of hands around the world, particularly in developing nations and places where infectious disease is more of a threat than here in the good-old-U.S.  But I think it’s a great time to encourage all the fake-hand-washers you know to make some sort of attempt at actual hygiene.

Don’t think you know any fakers?  You do.  Just pick ten random men that you know.  Eight or nine of them are fakers.  I’m totally going to make a sign to post on the mirror in my work restroom.  I’ll post (er, I mean, Mr. Handwasher will post) a picture of it on the Handwasher Blog.

Oh…linkage.  Check out the Global Handwashing Day website.

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Just a random thing about me…I don’t like shoes.  I feel they have extremely limited utility.  I like my Birkenstocks, but mostly even then because I can easily kick them off while at my desk.  I nearly always buy shoes with no laces so I can slip them off whenever I feel like it…which is most of the time.

However, I have a pair of Steve Maddens from Famous Footwear that I rarely take off even when I could.  I actually like a pair of shoes!!!

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As much as I harp on football, I actually do enjoy football highlights.  I just don’t like that Sportscenter can always find a way to lead with football even when it’s not football season.  Yesterday, Ethan and I turned on Fox to watch the NLCS and caught the last few minutes of the Cowboys-Cardinals game.  Ending it in overtime on a blocked punt touchdown was awesome.  And the Cowboys lost, which always brings a smile to my face.

There were actually two blocked punts on Sunday.  Cool.  There was a cool double reverse pass thingy…nice.  I’m a sucker for trick plays.  Baseball’s still better, but I can appreciate the good parts of football, even if the over-the-top celebrations for well-timed tackles bother me.

And I’ve realized that Ethan’s sports education is a bit one-sided.  He knows that you can take first base if the catcher drops strike three and first base is open, but he had no idea what a touchdown was.  He thinks football is a game we play out in the greenspace, where I kick the ball, then let him get to it, pick him up, and shake him upside down until he drops it.  At some point maybe I’ll fill in some of the blanks for him.  I don’t want him to be one of those guys who’s nervous to go to a Super Bowl party because he’s afraid the other guys will find out he doesn’t know anything about the game.

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While The Fair Elaine was out of town, I decided to cook.  I made awesome Lentil Soup.  Here’s the recipe if you’re interested.  It’s vegan and delicious.  Oh, and it was an alteration of a recipe from the Veganomicon.

2 cups lentils (Any of the brown/green/black variety should work.  Pink or yellow not so much)
8 cups vegetable broth (I used Imagine Foods’ “No Chicken Broth”)
4 carrots
4 stalks celery
1 small/medium onion
4 Yukon gold potatoes
4 cloves garlic (feel free to adjust to taste)
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp tarragon
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Finely dice the onion.  Mince the garlic.  Chop the carrots and celery into 1/4″ slices.  Cut potatoes into chunks of whatever size you wish.

In a large pot (I used cast iron), saute the veggies in the olive oil until the onions start to color.  Maybe 5-10 minutes.

Add the spices, vegetable broth, and lentils.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cover.  Simmer 45 minutes or until lentils are tender.

Serve with whole grain bread.  Yum!

BTW, I also added some leeks because I had them.  But I don’t think they’d make or break the recipe.  Oh, and Ethan loved the soup.  He even ate leftovers the next day.

I’m a big fan of cucumbers.  Indeed, I don’t think I’ve ever met one I didn’t like.  I like cukes sliced, speared, pickled (sweet pickles aren’t a favorite), shredded…you get the picture.  I don’t think I’d be crazy about them cooked, but just about any fresh application is attractive to me.

The latest way I’ve found I like them?  Armenian.  A while back, Ethan and I were perusing the vegetable section of New Seasons (something one does when one is mostly Veg), and we spotted something new.  Being a fan of nearly all vegetables (I can’t claim to hold great affection for okra), I moved in to check it out.  Turns out, it was an Armenian Cucumber.

Ethan liked it so much that he now eschews the other kind (although on the whole, he’s cooled on cukes in general).  They’re not as seedy, and the seeds aren’t as slimy as your garden-variety cuke.  The skin is a bit thicker, and they’re just crunchier than average.  The mouth feel is somewhere between kohlrabi and raw potato (both of which are awesome).

Mmm...cukes

Just thought I’d share.

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I admit I like award shows. Especially ones that show actual clips of the nominees. So, I DVR’d the Emmys and watched it on FFWD (that way I could skip all the scripted banter and just see the winners). I have no idea how Michael Emerson didn’t win for his work on Lost (or how he didn’t win last year…oh, Terry O’Quinn won. Ok.).

But for me, the highlight was Josh Groban’s medley of TV theme songs.  The guy just obviously takes himself too seriously.

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On the subject of watching spectacles, I also watched the last game to be played at the current Yankee Stadium.  Very cool history there, and it was a cool thing to watch.  Even cooler?  The Yankees not making the playoffs.  It just proves that you can’t buy a World Series.  Unless you can.  Becuz the Red Sox are still in it.  Me?  I’m going for the Cubbies this year, though I’d be happy to see the Rays take it and then move to Portland (maybe we’d actually fill the stadium?).

Ethan got his first Rubber Band Kill last Wednesday.  I’m extremely proud.  He stood on his bed, aimed carefully, and destroyed a spider.  It was a perfect shot (not an easy one, either…probably four feet).  It’s our version of hunting.  True, we basically do it for sport, but we don’t take trophies.  My collection of taxidermized flies, mosquitoes, spiders, and skeeter-eaters would be impressive, but I just always felt that kind of thing was kinda tacky.

I’m a great shot with a rubber band myself, but I don’t think I was as good as Ethan at his age.  I’m announcing it right now…Ethan for Gold Medal in Olympic Rubber Band Marksmanship in 2016!!!

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Perhaps you’re worried about terrorism, or maybe even Climate Change (snicker…sorry, can’t help it).  But I’m telling you right now that we face an even more dangerous danger…the Apostrolypse.  Perhaps you’ve never heard of such a thing.  What is it?  It’s the end of the world, brought on by the misuse of apostrophes.  Oh, I mean apostrophe’s.  If you don’t get it, you’ll want to do some reading.

Why do I think we’re in danger?  Elaine and I went to the Murray Hill Café the other day (just for dessert) and found this gem on the menu:

Lindsay’s’ Dessert of the Day

At least she didn’t go with “Desert,” which one encounters more than one might expect.

I didn’t find a dessert menu online, which was disappointing.  I did happen to look at the dinner menu and found a few things I’d like to try.  But I’m going to have to say something about that Dessert item.

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I’ve done it.  My webhost sent me a coupon for a free domain hosting package, and I set up my Restroom Blog.  There, I’ll start doing exploratory posts on the subject of the Restroom, in pursuit of my dream of publishing a book my mother would so NOT approve of.  If you’d like to help out with my research, head over there and keep an eye out for questions, surveys, and general mayhem.

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And now we’re heading for the Coast.  Buh-bye.

Maybe I’m taking the easy route here, since I linked Stephen King’s excellent and, dare I say, “Foney” take on Movie Snacks in my Monday Morning Musings. If you didn’t go check it out, here’s a sample (and another link to the full article):

From www.ew.com:

With my calorie-absorbent drink in hand, I can then safely order a large popcorn with extra butter. Of course it isn’t really butter, it’s some sort of mystery substance squeezed from the sweat glands of small animals, but I have developed such a taste for it over my years of filmgoing that the real stuff tastes wrong, somehow.

I normally get my popcorn with no glandular butter, but he makes me rethink that choice…

I’ve previously posted about Jossy Farms and their terrific U-Pick Peaches operation.  Well, the Red Havens are in!!!  I’m going to relieve them of a few at lunch today.

I had to do this as an addendum, because the permalink for my Monday Morning Musings was already hilariously long:

http://seth.heasley.net/blog/2008/08/tv/mmm-food-detectives-patriots-techno-olympic-memory-got-a-horn-stinkumference/

I was afraid I’d break the internet if I added anything else to it.

I really, really wanted to like Food Detectives.  I figured it’d be a nice combination of two of my favorite shows, Good Eats and Mythbusters.  Alas, it just doesn’t make it for me.

The problem?  The host. I expected Ted Allen to be a much more natural host (I like it when he’s a judge on Iron Chef America), but he was just awkward and stiff, and looked as if he wasn’t sure if the camera was rolling.  Did you ever have a substitute in like sixth grade who obviously was used to teaching Kindergarten?  That’s kind of the way Ted seemed.

With Mythbusters, you’ve got a voiceover narrator who carries much of the, well, narrative load.  The actual Mythbusters don’t even really interact with the camera much.  They’re mostly there to interact with each other, and the camera just happens to be rolling.  It’s quite informal.

On the other hand, on Good Eats, Alton brown does the narration and the hosting, but he pulls it off with a quirky, geeky and-yet-somehow-cool flair.

Oh well.  It’s not like I needed to add another Food Network show to my list.

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Ethan and I attended the last couple of hours of the Oregon Air Show yesterday.  I principally wanted to attend in order to see a new air-demonstration team.  Growing up near an Air Force Base (Elmendorf), I’ve seen the Blue Angels several times (I remember when they flew A-4s), the Thunderbirds, and even the Snow Birds (Canadian team).  So I was delighted to break in a new team.

This time, it was a civilian team, the U.S. Patriots.  They did not disappoint.  Although it’s a civilian team, that just means that the pilots are not currently active members of the military.  But the makeup of the team is still top-notch, with one of the pilots being a former member of the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds.

The aircraft they fly, the L-39, is not as high-performing as the Thunderbirds’ F-16 or the Blue Angels’ F-18, but there was a nice side-effect of this:  They aren’t quite so loud.

We still got a nice mix of group maneuvers and close fly-bys.  Very good show.

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Yesterday, during the 9am service at which I sang, most of the musicians were in the greenroom.  There, we were treated to a delightful example of videos which may come under subpoena during the inevitable trial, The United States v. White Men With Video Cameras.  I speak of Tyler’s Techno dancing video.  I particularly like the part where Tyler collapses to the couch, then starts doing an arm-only dance, then pops back up with an unexpected burst of energy.

I toyed with the idea of posting this for Too Funny Tuesday, but couldn’t wait.

(video embedded)

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I’ve got a great memory.  It’s a gift and, sometimes, a curse.  Like when I read the “quotes” page on IMDB and think, “Those quotes are wrong.”  My son seems to be blessed with the same affliction.  It’s not just movie quotes.   I also remember basically everything I learned in Survey of Art and Concepts of Lifetime Fitness, in spite of my desire to lose some of those memories.  I found out on Friday that I also have a pretty good Olympic Memory.  As the torch relay was concluding, I mused (aloud) to The Fair Elaine (paraphrased), “I wonder if that gymnast from the L.A. Games will get in here.  What was his name?  Li Ning, right?”  Ding!  I have no idea where I pulled the name out of, but five seconds later they handed the torch off to him, and he proceeded to go all Neo on the Bird’s Nest.  That was cool.

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This morning, on my way to work, I approached the traffic light at 10th and Oak.  A green light.  Were cars moving?  Not the left lane.  The right lane was attempting to move, but the truck over there came to a screeching halt, too.  Ambulance?  Police?  Family of geese?  Nope.

It was a moron.  Specifically, a teenaged girl, strolling across the street against the light.  Nice.  Well, I hope she learned her lesson from all those big, nasty cars sitting there, watching her illegally and dangerously crossing the road.  Um, folks in those cars, got a horn? Seriously, this is exactly the kind of situation in which some actual teaching should be going on.  And by teaching, I mean thoughts along this line: “Sorry about blowing your eardrums out, but you could be getting killed right now, so I think you’ll understand and maybe not do this kind of stupid stuff again, like ever.”

Problem is, people are afraid to use the horn.  We don’t want to be thought of as (gasp) aggressive drivers!!!  (visualize - with your ears - a blood-curdling scream).  So, the road is ruled by idiots who either drive dangerously or like 110-year-old women (BTW, I’m criticizing those who drive like old ladies, not the ladies themselves).  I’m not sure what the solution is here.  There’s no acceptable way for people who actually want, you know, to do 45 (or even 48) in a 45-zone, to communicate to the lady doing her makeup while driving 32-ish that we’d really like to go just a bit faster.  Can’t tailgate (not that it stops me), can’t flash our lights (see previous), because that’d be like mean and stuff.

One day I’m going to write a lengthy, 200-word essay titled “In Defense of Tailgating.”  It’ll be my magnum opus.

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Last minute addition…a new word for the Heasley lexicon.

stinkumference - the radial expression of body odor centered around a smelly person.  Decreases with increased distance.  Alternately, a measure of a person’s level of B.O.  (Example: “Wow, Tim has a serious stinkumference going today.”)

I’ve been thinking about coming up with a word for this for some time.  This morning, on my way back to my cubicle from the lab, I ventured dangerously close to the event horizon of such a phenomenon.  Dude…

If you ever want an adventure, travel to Seattle and try to find a hotel.  It’s awesome.  It’s inspiring.  It’s spontaneous travel at its best.  Now, our trip to Seattle had been on the books for a few days, at least, before we left the house.  But did we get reservations?  Nah, that’d take the fun out of not-being-able-to-stay-in-Seattle-due-to-everything-being-booked (possibly the Gamer Convention and Mariners-Red Sox game had something to do with it?).

Yeah, we ended up in a dive in Edmonds/Lynnwood.  Exactly as we planned.  Since the place did at least have free Wi-Fi (connected apparently to a 56k modem), we quickly secured lodging for the next night we’d need it.  Apparently this is commonly done by other travelers.  Now we know.

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While in Seattle, we took in a Mariners game and a third.  Seriously.  It was an extra-innings affair (12 innings, to be exact).  Unfortunately, our baseball mojo has apparently either worn off or gone over to the visiting teams.  We had an unbeaten home team record going, including two major league games and two minor league ones.  Streak broken.  Mariners lost 6-3.

Still, it was cool to see Ichiro! take away a home run from J.D. Drew and to see a couple of home team home runs.  It was also cool that the Mariners turned three double plays, but none of them were the common short to second to first (or permutations thereof) kind.  Instead, we had the lineout to second, runner doubled off first, strike ‘em out, throw ‘em out, and lineout to right, runner doubled off first kinds.  Most cool.  Unfortunately, the Red Sox turned a typical double play in the bottom of the 11th, with runners on first and third and only one out.  And then the Mariners loaded the bases in the bottom of the 12th and still couldn’t scratch out a win.  Bummer.

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If I had to name my top five favorite fruits, I’d struggle to come up with five varieties of peaches, but I’d come through in the end.  Because peaches, to my mind, are the pinnacle of God’s creation, proof of the common grace available to all.

It’s getting close to peach season in our area.  This is awesome.  If you somehow missed the Hood Strawberries, don’t make the same mistake with the peaches.

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Speaking of peaches, a word about Jossy Farms.  By the way, it’s pronounced “Joe-ssy.”  How do I know this?  Well, because I’m a frequent caller to their Sales Number, (503) 647-5234.  The proprietor always has a detailed (and hilariously animated) message on their voicemail, explaining which crops are available for picking and which ones may soon be ripe (or, in some cases, are completely gone).

Jossy Farms is a U-Pick farm with several varieties of peaches (Veterans are my favorites), Gravenstein Apples and Bartlett Pears.  Yum!  Some farms will let you come and harvest fruit well before it’s ripe.  Not Jossy Farms.  If you pick there, you won’t be disappointed, and it’s fairly convenient.  You can check their website out and get directions if you’re interested.

Oh, and the Redhaven Peaches apparently won’t be ripe until the second week in August.  Bummer.

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Trend-setter that I am, I’ve decided to read The Shack.  I picked it up a few weeks ago at Christian Supply, but it’s been collecting dust while I’ve been working through my stack of library books.  But, I finished the one book that was keeping me interested, so I decided to pick up The Shack and get started.  Along with everybody else in the world, from what I understand.  I may post a review here once I finish (Weirdly, after I started reading it, I picked up one of my library books again and found it engaging again.  So, I’ll be reading the two of them…give me a couple of weeks to slog through).

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And now, back to work.  Ugh.

I figure I should make room in my new Theme Enhanced Blog for some relatively Deep Thoughts. To that end, I give you Theology Thursday. Which basically means that if I have thoughts about Scripture or Church or anything like that, I’ll write them up but won’t actually post them until Thursdays. Or, I’ll promote another day to Thursday and post it anyway, then post a link back to it on Thursday and hope nobody notices. How’s that?

Many times, I think we Protestants assume that theology held by Catholics must be somehow fundamentally flawed. At the very least, we assume they’re not using the Bible to come up with it. For Bible Believing Christians, this is a major problem, and rightfully so. To my mind, if a theology can’t be proved (or at least supported) from Scripture, it’s instantly suspect. Of course, we find as often as not that a while a particular bit of theology can’t be proven from Scripture, it also can’t be solidly disproved. In my Bible reading this week, I came across one of the best verses in support of the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary.

(more…)

Ganked from TFE.

3 things I don’t like:

elevators that stop at the second floor

short turn signals

the recycle bin left directly behind my car

3 things I do like:

coffee day!

Indian food for lunch (with Jason and Eric)

short sleeve days! (better yet…shorts days!)