It looks like my brother Ant and his wife Kara will be bringing another BOY into the family! And while I’m thrilled because I’ve got lots of leftover ideas from Penn, I’m a little sad that I won’t get to knit frilly girl things yet. (JENNY – GET ON THIS.)Ha! Okay, yeah, I’m asking for it with that one. 🙂
Month: August 2007
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Cincinnati Chili
O what to make for dinner on a cold and rainy night? I had a flash of inspiration: Cincinnati Chili. (Or as I knew it from college: “the chili they have at Steak N Shake.”) According to various web histories, this dish was created and popularized by Greek immigrants in Ohio in the first half of the 20th century. Basically, it’s a version of chili served on top of spaghetti, with lots more toppings piled on. My version tonight was quick and bastardized (based on this recipe), and I’m sure the purists are writhing in agony. To begin with, I didn’t BOIL my hamburger for two hours or puree it in the food processor. I forgot to add the chocolate. And I put the beans in the sauce rather than serve them on the side. Whatever; it was still pretty tasty. We had ours as “Chili Three-Way,” with shredded cheddar cheese piled on top. YUM!In other food-related news, I discovered a great new Asian food blog last week while googling for a mapo tofu recipe. I even waylaid the staff at our local Chinese grocery to help me track down fermented black beans. I was bummed that I couldn’t find authentic Sichuan peppercorns… until the Snook came home and revealed he had some hidden in the spice cupboard. (Who knew?) The mapo tofu turned out EXCELLENT, so good I forgot to take pictures in our haste to gobble it up. But mine looked just like that guy’s photo anyway. Highly recommended.
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Dream Jobs and Dream Apartments
Remember the amazing apartment I found online last week? The Snook and I went to check it out on Saturday (along with three other places in the neighborhood). To make a long story short: It wasn’t my dream apartment after all. The first thing we noticed when we arrived was that I was not the only person pulled in by those photos. There had to be a hundred people there for the viewing, and we had to wait in a queue just to take the lift up. The photos weren’t misleading or anything; the place still looked gorgeous. The biggest problem for us was the kitchen, which wasn’t pictured (for good reason). It just hadn’t been done up to the standard of the rest of the place, and it would need a major overhaul to be what we’d like. Also, the bedroom faced full west, and even on this cool spring day it was noticeably warmer in there. (It would be sweltering in the summer.) So, lesson learned. I’m going to try hard not to get emotionally attached to any place I haven’t inspected with my own eyes; it’s too easy to be misled.
In other news… I have a phone interview this Friday. I don’t want to talk it up too much in case I jinx it, but it’s with my #1 Dream Company to Work For. I’m nervous but excited. Any positive thoughts you could send my way – be it prayers, The Secret, whatever – would be much appreciated!
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Surreal
This is so surreal. I was just checking my referrers and apparently I’ve been linked on the Wikipedia entry for “Happy’s Place”. I also noticed that a commenter here pointed me to this Google video of an entire episode. Man, suddenly it’s like I’m 9-years-old, watching Happy at the babysitter’s after school…
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Espresso Overdose!
A cautionary tale: Do NOT drink seven double espressos in one sitting! You will overdose!
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American Psycho
American Psycho
Since I had the day off (and I could barely walk on account of the soreness) I spent several hours finishing off Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. I found it… disturbing, to say the least. At one point today, I actually said aloud to the cat: “But I thought porn was banned in Australia?” According to Wikipedia, this book is “classified R18” in Australia and should be “sold shrink-wrapped” only to those above 18 years of age. (The state of Queensland bans it entirely.) Um, I bought my used and well-thumbed copy for $1.50 from a CHURCH BOOK FAIR. Did they not know what they were selling me? Or is it a conversion tool, meant to scare unwary readers into a religious epiphany? Because that might work.I was expecting more obvious black humor (from the glimpses I had of the movie trailer, I guess), and I spent most of the first half of the book waiting for him to, you know, actually kill somebody. He kept mentioning it to his oblivious friends, and I started to think maybe we wouldn’t actually “see” any of the violence. It was all just business suits and brand names and Genesis discographies. Yeah, then it kicked in. And each attack got worse and worse. Towards the end I was just skimming whole pages, because this is SERIOUSLY SICK STUFF. Like, the sickest you can think of. I’m still trying to work out for myself whether I think the message Ellis is trying to get across is worth wading through such muck. My googling has turned up this page of critical responses from when it was published, which helps put matters into context. This article sums up my own response pretty well. I knew that feminists hated the book, and I thought I was prepared for something “politically incorrect,” but this book crossed a line that even my “liberal-ness” finds difficult to defend. This book made me feel horrified and horrible, and I almost wish I hadn’t read it.Just keep that in mind when you spot it on the discount table at your next church book fair…
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Irish Tea Cosy
I’ve just finished my second tea cosy for the aforementioned Great Tea Cosy Challenge. I also found this one on Ravelry, and the pattern is available online. (There are two mistakes though; see below.) It was kinda fun knitting something without a picture to refer to. I wasn’t quite sure what it was going to look like! I also had my first go at making pompoms. This cosy features an open top with a drawstring, which is nice if you’ve got a particularly odd-shaped lid or a handle on top. Even using 4mm needles and 8ply yarn, this is still a fairly large cosy. We only have small teapots, so I fudged the photo by propping our little pot up on a dishtowel. In terms of yarn, I again used some random cheap acrylic that I found in the bottom of my stash. (I’d never purposefully buy acrylic now that I’m a yarn-store-workin’ fiber snob!) Anyway, that’s two down!Pattern Errata (as posted on Ravelry):
In the Popcorn Panel, row 1 should read:
Row 1: P2, P3, turn, K3, turn, P3 tog, P1, P3, turn, K3, turn, P3tog, P2.In the Diamond Panel, row 11 should read:
Row 11: P1, slip next stitch to cable needle, hold in back of work, K1, P stitch from cable needle, (K1, P1) 4 times, slip next stitch to cable needle, K1, K stitch from cable needle, P1. -
Desert 2 Desert
Here’s another story on the City 2 Surf, which includes the great detail that Australian defense personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq participated in their own version, the Desert 2 Desert. Fairfax is hoping to have their results included with everybody else. That’s neat!
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City 2 Surf
City 2 Surf 2007
Old American Guy: Excuse me. I just flew into Sydney today. Is there a race on or something?
Me: Yep. The City 2 Surf. Largest fun run in the world.
Him: Where does it go?
Me: From in the city here all the way out to Bondi Beach. It’s like more than 8 miles. And hey, you sound like me!
Him: Where are you from?
Me: Indiana.
Him: Did you fly all the way here just for this race??I wish I’d said, “Yeah, I’m the favorite to win.” But instead I said, “No, I live here. I’m just waiting now for my husband to pick up his stupid race number.”
Anyway, the Snook got his number and we took our positions in the Back of the Pack. (Last year we started in an earlier group, but the Snook had left his registration too late this year. So we were in the big group with the walkers and the strollers and the freaks in gorilla suits.) The gun went off and it probably took us twenty minutes just to get up to the starting line. We were literally in the last 500 people (out of more than 64,000) to start the race. I’ll tell you what though – running with the fatties and the babies sure makes you feel like you’re flying! We ran pretty much all the way to the tunnel at the end of Williams Street. After that, we alternated between jogging on the flat and downhill sections, and brisk walking on the hills. We passed thousands of people. In Double Bay I was thrilled to see the same 80’s hair band rockin’ out on the pub roof as they did last year. We made an effort to use the drinks stations more this year (it was a beautiful, hot sunny day) and I was checking our pace pretty frequently with the Nike+ iPod kit. Heartbreak Hill was hard, but mentally I was just so much more prepared this year. (At one point, Rodd commented that “This is where you pretty much broke down last year.” I laughed and started jogging again.) We were both hurting on our descent into Bondi, and I’d been nursing a mild stitch since the 3km mark. But we persevered. The Snook knew just how to motivate me, letting me set the pace and pointing out other racers that he knew I would hate to let beat me, like the “Peaky Striders” (a walking group of old women in bright orange shirts who kicked my butt at several events last year) and the inevitable dork in a gorilla suit. We sprinted the last bit to the finish line, raising our arms for what should (hopefully) be a pretty awesome photograph. Our revised goal for the day had been to average less than ten minutes a kilometer, and thanks to all the jogging we did, we pretty much smashed it. The iPod registered a time of 2:01:30, which works out to a pace of 8:48 per kilometer. So that’s a little slower than last year, but better than expected considering our injuries and lack of training. Getting home was the usual headache of endless queues and bus rides, and we stumbled in nearly six hours after we’d left. After a shower and a sandwich, I was off to the masseuse for some much needed relaxation… And now we’re both dealing with the inevitable aches and pains. But we did it!
