In the immortal words of Socrates, "...I drank what?"

I made two recipes last night from Cookthink. One was for a Green Onion Beer Bread, and the other for a Pumpkin, Ham, and Swiss Chard soup .

The bread turned out more or less ok. The recipe called for five packets (1.25 oz) of Active Dry Yeast, but then gave no time for the bread to rise. It also required no kneading. I have never made bread before, but that seemed a bit odd to me. Indeed, when we tasted the bread, it was incredibly yeast-y. I think I want to make it again, but this time I want to knead it a little (I think if I knead it less, it will be denser, which I like) and see if it rises. For the beer, I used 12 oz of Smith's Nut Brown Ale. I also added some pecorino romano. Next time, I will try a different beer, not because I didn't like this one, but because I'm curious as to how different it will taste.

( pictures under the cut )

The soup, however, was fantastic. And it should be, with two tablespoons of butter, a cup and a half of half and half, pumpkin, spices, and a handful of other delicious components. I added some chili flakes and oregano, and substituted apple cider vinegar for white wine vinegar and beet chard for swiss chard. For the white wine, I used some 2 buck chuck sauvignon blanc. G. and R. both responded very positively. We had some Beringer Cabernet Sauvignon with the bread and soup on a hot July night and watched Kill Bill volume 2, everything lending itself to an experience which was wholly incongruous, but still fun and delicious. G. and I ended the night with a little bit of The Glenlivet.

( more! pictures under the cut )

In short, I had fun. Tonight, G. is planning on making fish tacos. I am so excited. :)

Found this on the poetry lj that I sometimes read:

“Just Keep Quiet and Nobody Will Notice”
Ogden Nash

There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges,
Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies.
I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet,
Because I think that is sort of sweet;
No, I object to one kind of apology alone,
Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own.
You go to their house for a meal,
And they apologize because the anchovies aren't caviar or the partridge is veal;
They apologize privately for the crudeness of the other guests,
And they apologzie publicly for their wife's housekeeping or their husband's jests;
If they give you a book by Dickens they apologize because it isn't by Scott,
And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot;
They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can,
But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American.
I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them,
I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spent in contradicting them,
Because you are very rude if you let them emerge from an argument victorious,
And when they say something of theirs is awful, it is your duty to convince them politely that it is magnificent and glorious,
And what particularly bores me with them,
Is that half the time you have to politely contradict them when you rudely agree with them,
So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf,
Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.

I do this sometimes. And I know it's not good. And I should probably get rid of it as a habit. Thanks Ogden Nash. It's not a little narcissistic to think that everything going wrong is your fault. And, as Taltal's Dad has said, and as I need to remember more often, perfection is the enemy of possibility.

but have a Billy Collins poem?

Forgetfulness - Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

A version animated and read outloud!

G. gardened a lot this weekend and last (I think last?) and almost everything is planted or repotted now. We still need to plant seeds for:
a) Nasturtium (orange and pretty and edible - G. says these are what we make capers from)
b) Tomatillos
c) Several Varieties of Basil

( The passion flower vine she chose is beautiful. )

Tonight, she's making cheese and corn enchiladas with a tomato sauce for dinner, and she just made coleslaw with red cabbage, caraway seeds, sesame oil, apple cider vinegar, chili flakes, black pepper and salt, and maybe some sunflower seeds later. Needless to say, I am excited for dinner. I am also excited to cook on Tuesday. I am going to try my hand at making some Green Onion Beer Bread and some creamy Pumpkin soup with Ham and Beet Chard. Later in the week, I'm thinking about making some spicy corn and shrimp fritters with green curry aioli, a crab salad with wheat (wheat berries? I bought this stuff in France, it's called blé précuit, or pre-cooked wheat) and corn and a tasty goat cheese dressing.

Now we need to go to a hardware store (unless Ralph's magically has what we need) to get a wrench in order to put together the incredibly ugly but incredibly functional GORM basic shelving unit. Oy. Today, we also purchased a little table for $2 from fellow linguists having a garage sale. It is now home for the router, modem, speakers, and (sort of) Ryan's giant pile of awesome video games that we are babysitting. And I picked up two books: The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Score.

Yoga later, hopefully. 5:30-6:30. I need to be not a baby and just go do it. It's only an hour, and I do feel good afterward. And it's my last free class opportunity.

Sending love to you all
- B

PS - also, our kitty-corner neighbors got robbed yesterday, while we were home, even, I might have heard them. They had their window open and unlocked, and the screen was pushed in. Scary. We are strongly considering renter's insurance.

But I have a link to share, just in case you were looking for a something curious with which to waste a few moments:

http://www.wholesomewear.com/page-3.html


Because I like swimming in a wet suit + garbage bag.

Love to you all.

- B

I am done with one year of graduate school. It was wonderful, and also terrifying and monumentally stressful. I will have to post again about that specifically. At the moment, I have little spare time because I am packing all of my stuff (how do we always end up with so many *things*?) to transfer to the apartment my girlfriend, Gwen, and I are moving into. It is relatively close to where I am living currently, but it's nicer, and only $7 more (for each of us) a month than what I'm currently paying. It also has a pool on-site, an in-unit washer and dryer and dishwasher, a designated parking space, and it is within walking distance to three grocery stores and a CVS. It's maybe a mile from campus, so, definitely within biking distance.

I am posting now as a little break from packing, but also in order to save these quotations I found on a piece of paper that was wedged somewhere in one of the mountains of papers and receipts and old handouts that have been decorating(read: obstructing walkways in) my room. I copied these quotations down on a spare sheet of paper when I visited the San Diego Museum of Art . They accompanied descriptions of certain artists or works of art.

To show your true ability is always, in a sense, to surpass the limits of your ability, to go a little beyond them, to dare, to seek, to invent; it is at such a moment that new talents are revealed, discovered, and realized.
-Simone de Beauvoir

Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.
- George Braque

Found under Petite Solitude au milieu des soleils by Francis Picabia, "Tableau peint pour raconter, non pour prouver."

Piece to remember: No. 12 Special by Georgia O'Keefe

Finally, I wanted to say that I'm sorry I abandoned this journal for so long, and especially that in doing so I stopped communicating more regularly with many of you. I miss you all, and I hope to be better with the more-regular communication this summer. <3 <3 <3
- B.

"desirable phonological property"

coming from:

"For example, Kisseberth (1970) noted that in
generative phonology particular rules are postulated to predict certain
alternations and distributional patterns, but observed that a variety of
different rules might in some sense “conspire” to yield outputs that have
some desirable phonological property." (from Optimal Domains Theory and Bantu Tonology by Kisseberth and Cassimjee)

Why do what appear to be "conspiracies" emerge? Can we really know whether something is a conspiracy? Why is a particular phonological property desirable? --> ease of articulation? perceptual distinguishability? There's possibly a better word for that.

Can I read about this instead of writing my essay please?

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
What I create will be just for you.
It'll be done this year. (NB: That gives me a lot of time...)
You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a story. It may be poetry. I may draw or paint something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you have to put this in your journal as well. We all can make stuff!

the WORST luck with mass transportation. I think this is one reason I love cars so much. They give you freedom and control. Guess where I am? In LA! Guess where I'm supposed to be? San Diego is the correct answer to this question. Why am I in LA? Because of The Fog (every day, fuckin' fog everywhere, as Eddie Izzard might say). The Fog forced us to land in LA and I am now waiting here to be picked up by Angel, who is friggin' awesome.

I don't think I could count the number of times I have had massive travel hiccups or delays using mass transportation on (ooo, security officer on a segway...) my digits unless I included toes. Even then, I'm not so sure I would make it.

They had buses for us, but there were not enough for the 5 planeloads of people that needed to head South. They were waiting for more (hopefully to arrive in an hour and a half) when I decided to take Angel up on her offer to come get me. I realized as I was walking toward the International Terminal that I have been in two bus accidents in my life, both in foreign countries where I have lived for a given amount of time. The first was in New Zealand. Our bus was traveling to the North of the South Island, and we were going through some really beautiful hilly land with pine trees everywhere and the sun was shining and the trees were bathed in gold and then we hit a car that was backing out of someone's driveway. Two girls were visiting a farm to get a kitten to take home, and we hit them broadside, like a T with a tiny tiny top line. Amazingly, no one was hurt. Their car was in bad shape, and the front of the bus was in bad shape, too, so much so that they sent another one to take us the rest of the way to our destination.

The other accident happened in Metz. C and I were taking the bus home from teaching at Montigny, and the bus was stopped at a stop. As people were boarding, a woman looked at the bus, and then at her car which was parked right next to us. She looked back, and then went to open her door to get something out of her car. At that moment, the bus decided it was time to move. I don't know whose fault it was, probably both of them were to blame. The bus driver did not check carefully enough, and the woman made the poor decision to prop her door open against the bus which was making a brief stop. The door was nearly ripped off her car, and the bus had a scratch all along the right side.

There was also that time when Court and Perrin and I went to New York on the Chinatown bus, and it overheated and bottle after bottle of the passengers' water was used to try and make the bus functional again.

I don't think I like buses...

To be continued, perhaps, later.

In the shower I spent some time reflecting on the year that is nearly over, and I realized that I am frustrated, and disappointed. I feel like I have done nothing of any importance whatsoever. I have not felt intellectually engaged, and it is my fault for not seeking this out when I know it's been missing from my life. I suppose, perhaps, it is that I have not been engaging myself. I feel lethargic. I feel like I'm thinking through mud, as if, if I could only remove this weighty, continuous sludge melting over my brain, then I could think clearly, and engage, and see things clearly, and not drown. I feel like I'm missing half of what's going on. Part of this is due, perhaps, to needlessly overthinking things, and not trying harder to engage with the outside world.

Biggest Regrets/Changes that need to be made:
- I haven't pushed myself intellectually, and that's just dumb. What am I doing?
- I have not changed my pattern of poor correspondence, and for this I am truly sorry. I need to find some way to get myself into the habit of talking to people who aren't immediately physically available in my day-to-day life.
- I've let myself get overwhelmed far too easily.
- I need to take care of myself, to retrain myself to be active. This has given me so much energy in the past, I just need to get over the difficulty of the plunge and do it.

-- I think what most of this boils down to, in my mind, is that I just need to stop overthinking, and act. While in France, I wrote nearly thirty pages of observations, and more on random bits of paper, and never did anything with them. Most of this is still in my Dreaded Mass Email folder, placed helpfully on my desktop as if I'm still going to do something with it. I stopped writing notes to myself about sending DME halfway into the quarter. The number of cards I've begun and never sent makes me sad.

Less-Important-But-Still-Annoying Regret:
- My itunes library is at 18 and a half GB, and is totally disorganized. I downloaded artwork for some of my pirated stuff recently, but that was just the tip of the iceberg, and I feel overwhelmed in this project. It's a little silly, but I want it to be tidy, accessible. One less ball I'm juggling.

Stuff I didn't do at home Regrets:
- I didn't read nearly as much as I wanted to
- I didn't get my hair cut
- I still haven't found that friggin' cd.

.....
This year, maybe, was a year for perceiving, for observing. Maybe I am in a barren period of creativity. I hope that with the beginning of a new year that I can wake myself up, that I can find some interesting question I want to spend time thinking about, and not just thinking about but working on, that I can take whatever is happening inside my head and do something with it. I think I have lost whole worlds in my mind, simply because I don't feel comfortable ... with what? I feel like I have to convert whatever is going on in there so that it makes sense outside. "How can you stay outside? There's a beautiful mess inside." Maybe the reason I feel lonely so often is because I isolate myself, most of the time without intending to do so? Just get over it. "The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard, dies young."

This is what I want:

Don't let me drown in silence
All pious and polite
Let's make a lot of noise!
A different kind of light
Will fill the room.
I want my death to wake you up
And clean you out
And as I end
I'll hear you shout

I want to wake up, feeling new, centered, strong, focused, endlessly curious, capable, alive.

We are visiting my Dad's family in Audubon today. Part of the reason we are going (aside from it being the holiday season, is that my Uncle (Dad's brother-in-law) had cancer and this was probably one of the last chances, if not the last chance, for us to see him. We got a call this morning from his wife, my Dad's sister, to say that he had died during the night. We're sad. The boys don't really understand, I don't think, which is maybe a good thing. He was a good man, intelligent and sharp and inquisitive and kind, with a great sense of humor, and the world is a little darker without him.

A problem: there is an ice storm moving east across the state. It is currently where we are going, and is heading toward us. We will be driving straight through it. It is probably not safe to drive, yet we are going anyway. I understand why Dad is pushing so hard for us to go now, but I am a little worried. I really, really hope we don't get into an accident. So, wish us luck?

You know what the greatest superpower in the world would be? To be able to know exactly where a given thing is. I have gone through so many piles of old papers looking for this friggin' CD full of phonology dissertations and I can't find it and it is driving me nuts. Aaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghh.

I did find two pages of physics equations from an old assignment notebook, but I have forgotten what just about everything on the pages is. I recognize eV! But that's about it. There's something about QM and Maxwell's Equations, but I do not remember what I was on about. Ha! And a note about scrapping Schrödinger, and something about vacuum energy. verityk, do you remember why we were scrapping Schrödinger? What the *hell* was I *talking* about? I'm so frustrated that I had all of this information in my head which is now ... somewhere in there? I think? but clearly not readily accessible.

Hmph.

Whine List:

*I woke this morning to the delicate, dulcet sounds of one brother screaming at the other to "Shut up!!!" More fighting ensued.

*My coffee started out hot, but got cold in what seemed to be mere seconds. I don't like microwaving it, but I will. Grrr...

*I miss Gwen.

*I am cold.

*I feel like a terrible person for not wanting to spend time with my family, but I don't think I can take them all together. I don't think they can take themselves all together, which sucks. One on one they are great, so maybe I just need to work on spending time with them that way?

*Will has a phone? He is 12! Why does he need a phone?

*AAaaaargh!! The boys don't keep track of/take care of their possessions, yet they keep receiving expensive things. They have not at all learned to value and be grateful for what they are able to have.

*There's just so much stuff, all over the house, most of it entirely unnecessary. The house is filled with the detritus of mindless spending. It feels so wasteful, both in terms of money, and in terms of 'stuff'. So much plastic, so much trash... When it was just me and mom, it was not at all like that. I think she started feeling more financially comfortable once she married dad, even though they are financially separate. And feeling comfortable financially should be great, but I think in her comfort she has become a bit careless, as has he, and that is really really unfortunate. They are doing ok, but I don't think they have that much wiggle room. And that kind of carelessness is just dumb.

*I sound like such a jerk right now...

*I miss my Mawrtyrs. A lot. I miss my linguists, too, but I will see them all very soon.


so grumpy... ew. ew ew ew.
_____________

Ok. I believe it is now out of my system. I am going to move on with the day. I shall occupy myself with some sort of useful activity.

Oh my god, I just realized why the TV is called the boob tube! They were so tranquil just now, I thought, "gee, it's like a giant pacifier...oh!" Sometimes I am a bit slow?

A shower will help me move on. Shower time.

You know those moments you have sometimes when words look so, so weird? 'Shower' seems to be the weirdest word in the world right now. Shower. shower...

I think this post might be cracked.

you "that's what she said" yourself in your own head.

Consider the following:

My brother comes over and shakes his hair in my face, which was annoying, and potentially concussive. So, I say, "Oh, honey, not in my face."

(In head, what pops up immediately (That's what she said!)? "That's what she said!")

Ahhh! And again!

"Go entertain yourself!"

("That's what she said!")

Jesus.

Something on jealousy from the wikipedia article on Compersion :

The definition of compersion is often mistakenly referred to as "the opposite of jealousy", with the term jealousy explicitly used to describe one's pain at a lover's positive experience with a perceived rival.

I am working on my own work at the café where I barista (still, yes, but only 6 hours a week which is manageable, I think, and I will hopefully be able to work more in the summers to earn money I won't be earning from the department...). It is after my shift, and I am hanging out with Angel doing crap for French. I plugged my iPod into our stereo system for some ambient noise, and came back to sit and work. After a little bit, I noticed a beat that I hadn't expected. It sounded like Nelly Furtado's "Say it Right", and I thought, "Hey! I didn't choose that playlist..." I went to go change it, but it was in fact playing songs from the playlist I thought I had selected. I came back to sit down, but noticed that the beat was still there. I searched for the source, which turned out to be our coffee roaster! Parts of it are rotating (I think it is cleaning itself?) and it is making noise. Apparently, this was close enough to percussion from this song that I was convinced that that was what was playing on my iPod. Awesome.

For some reason, I was thinking about this this afternoon:



Yoinked from Chris's Soraya_Series site.

I found this while trying to do a little inbox cleaning:

Nothing is predetermined; it is determined, or will be determined. No
matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was
invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and
detailed canvas that we have been given-so we track it, in linear fashion,
piece by piece...The univerise is still and complete. Everything that
ever was, is; everything that ever will be, is-and so on, in all possible
combinations. Though in percieving it we imagine that it is in motion, and
unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful.

-Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin

And now, back to French planning/correcting! I heart, heart, heart French. Like WHOA. *gag*

Clearly I suck. Or, I'm busy. Possibly a combination of the two. But, I bring you reason # 64,800,756,042 why I love my wife:

K: your suckiness is seeping from cali to flori
me: my my
K: i know
how do you do it?
me: ummmm
magnets?
Katherine: hm
do magnets seep?
no
you suck again!
me: but magnets attract things, or repel things, so I could be repelling the suck all the way to florida with one pole of a super-suck magnet
K: I see what you did there
or rather, attempted to do
me: and you like it
K: and I disapprove
me: you love it
you heart it like whoa
K: remember that face I sent you? "like whoa" deepens my scowl

Face is included below for your viewing pleasure:

Japan

Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It's the one about the one-ton
temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.

--Billy Collins

I miss reading for pleasure. Maybe I can get some Borges in tonight, if I correct x number of french assignments first?

Found today by accident:

Failing and Flying
by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Trying to Have Something Left Over
by Jack Gilbert

There was a great tenderness to the sadness
when I would go there. She knew how much
I loved my wife and that we had no future.
We were like casualties helping each other
as we waited for the end. Now I wonder
if we understood how happy those Danish
afternoons were. Most of the time we did not talk.
Often I took care of the baby while she did
housework. Changing him and making him laugh.
I would say Pittsburgh softly each time before
throwing him up. Whisper Pittsburgh with
my mouth against the tiny ear and throw
him higher. Pittsburgh and happiness high up.
The only way to leave even the smallest trace.
So that all his life her son would feel gladness
unaccountably when anyone spoke of the ruined
city of steel in America. Each time almost
remembering something maybe important that got lost.