The Joke's On Me

After receiving further text messages and one phone call from the aforementioned strangers, I got a text message this evening from my friend Casey. She texts me from her husband's phone because she always loses hers. I have neglected to save her husband's phone number, mainly because I'm afraid I'll call or text him, trying to reach her and he'll be at work in an important meeting or something (in fact, I think I've actually already done it).

Her husband's number and the aforementioned strangers number are quite similar.

You can guess what I did (at least I wasn't rude).

Random text messages cont.

I did get a response.

"So this works as a form of communicating?"

"Well. In some respects. Although I don't think you're texting who you think you're texting. I believe you are texting a wrong number."

"If this is a wrong number, then how are you receiving my texts?"

Pure gold.

Random text messages.

I received a random text message the other night. It read:

"We're here. Are you?"

I knew it most likely wasn't from anyone I knew, because it was sent from a bay area area code. I still have a bay area area code, so when I get random calls from 607 (Ithaca) numbers, I know that the person is very likely trying to reach me, as opposed to random calls from the bay, which are almost always wrong numbers. Like that woman who left me 3 messages for her son, trying to get him to call her back.

I forgot about the text, until this morning:

"Got your phone on?"

To which I responded,

"Yes. Who is this?"

The response an hour or so later,

"Papa"

My father doesn't use the word papa. He doesn't even use the word "dad". I call him by his first name and always have. He also doesn't use text messaging.

Just now, I got another message from the same number.

"I mean, Joe's Bar."

To which I responded (of course),

"Okay, Joe's Bar. See you there."

I'm not expecting a response, but I really hope I get one.

Absent Minded Ninny.

I am an absent minded ninny. I also suffer from "anxiety".

Today I left the house to go on a trail ride at Kathy's. An hour after getting to Kathy's and three minutes before I was supposed to get on, Casey mentioned something about the fresh bread we have been making everyday. I remembered the huge bowl of rising bread dough sitting on the counter and I remembered this story. I could not remember if I had put it away. I assumed that because I did not remember putting it away and because I am an absent minded ninny, that I had not put it away. I called Ryan, frantically, asking him to run home.
Fairly convinced that I had killed Jeeves (Barnaby goes in the crate when we are out), I handed the pony off, jumped in the car still wearing my half chaps and helmet and drove home, as fast as I could considering the state police station on the way and the big storm that slowed the traffic down.

Ryan called me when I was 5 minutes away (the drive should be half an hour from Kathy's, it was longer on account of the conditions) to say, "You put the dough away. All he got was a spatula."

***

Ryan says I shouldn't beat myself up about my absent mindedness, that instead, I should use positive reinforcement when I'm not absent minded. The problem with that is that I don't know whether I'm going to forget something until I've forgotten it. I can't pat myself on the back for remembering to do things that any normal adult would remember to do. 

***

Throwing Bricks at Rothko.

Here's a silly little joke my husband and I share:

Before we got married, my husband's Crazy Ex Girlfriend sent him several emails escalating into a final you're-a-terrible-person, your-mother-must-be-so-devastated and I-never-want-to-speak-to-you-again essay. This was all because he told her he was getting married. I could go into further detail and discuss the circumstances that led up to this, in order to satisfy my claim that she is indeed crazy, but you'll just have to take my word for it because I don't have the energy to go into it and also I have to take her possible feelings into consideration. I mean, does she really want the whole world to know that she took a bath with another one of my husband's ex-girlfriends and then called my husband's mother to tell her about it?

It was a strange thing to happen but we've somehow managed to glean some humour out of the whole situation. One of her main complaints was that we hadn't been together long enough, particularly long enough to have had a "real" fight:

"Have you guys even fought yet? I don't mean a mild disagreement either. I mean the kind of fight that makes you want to hit the other person with a brick for just a split second."

(I found that quote by searching for the word "brick" in my email)

Now, I don't know about anyone else, but I have never, ever wanted to hit anyone with anything, let alone a brick. At the time I thought it was a weirdly violent thing to say (and still do) and pointed it out. Then one of us suggested that maybe we couldn't get married because we didn't have any bricks to throw at each other and that we would need to obtain some bricks in order to be able to have a proper fight. It's a nice way to bring out the real absurdity in her statement. Ryan's mum's in on the joke too.

We see bricks lying on the side of the road and one of us will say, "Hey! Should have a fight? I see some bricks." or, we'll start a small argument about something and one of us will say, "Whoa. We can't do this. No bricks on hand."

Today on CL I noticed that there were free bricks available in Lansing.

me: Someone's giving away free bricks on CL.

Ryan: Maybe they just had a break up and don't need them anymore

me: I read the ad. Apparently, they are overwhelmed with responses.


Ryan: like, "We're getting married in May and don't yet have our bricks. Could you deliver them?"

me: "I really want to buy an expensive piece of equipment that my wife thinks is unnecessary. Are the bricks still available?"

"I'd like to bring up certain things about the way my husband puts his pants on in the morning, but I ran out of bricks last week discussing the way he takes the garbage out. How many bricks do you have to offer?"

Ryan: "I really need your bricks. man. I am totally sick and fucking tired of the way she picks at her toenails."

"My wife thinks I am lazy. I think she's fat. I can pick up and haul away as many bricks as you can offer."

"My wife spends money like its water. So, obviously I can't afford to pay much for the bricks, but as you can see, I really need them."

me: "I'm planning on asking the woman of my dreams to marry me. I want her to understand how committed I am to her and this marriage, so I'd like to stockpile some bricks."

Ryan: "My husband and I have been in a wonderful, loving relationship for 8 years, and we just recently ran through the last of our wedding bricks. Not having bricks to hand has been a real strain on our relationship. Are your bricks still available?"

To date, Ryan and I have only had two real arguments. Neither of which resulted in us wanted to cause bodily harm to the other. One was when Jeeves got too rough with me and grabbed at my head with his paws, getting his claws right in my scar. I curled up in a fetal position and tried not to vomit (I don't like people touching my scar, let alone digging their claws into it) and Ryan instructed me that I had the wrong reaction, that I should have disciplined the dog. He's right in some regards, but in the other, more pressing at the time regard, I was in too much pain and too upset to deal directly with the situation. He came around later, when I explained to him exactly what had happened and showed him the scratch marks.

The other big fight was in the Tate Modern, with extenuating circumstances. It takes some amount of talent to have a huge fight in a museum and we never resolved. Rather, we just agreed to joke about it instead of fight about it from then on with Ryan periodically sending me Rothkos that he made with Microsoft Paint. 

"The border didn't turn out as well as I wanted it to, but my three minutes ran out."

My Own Rothko

by Ryan

Dizziness and Flonase.

Picking up my Flonase from the pharmacist yesterday, I chuckled at the big sticker on the box of that showed a nose, accompanied by the words "FOR THE NOSE". The pharmacist asked what I was chuckling about. I pointed at the sticker and she replied, frowning, "You'd be surprised."

The Flonase is because I've been having dizzy spells for a week or so. Last week they were so bad I couldn't really get off the couch. It was compounded with a nasty cold, so that might have been another reason I spent the morning working from a horizontal position. Ryan came home early to look after me, which was really nice. He does nice things like that a lot, so I forgive him for giving me the cold.

Anyway, the cold left but the dizziness is still on and off and this, compounded with a recurrent pain in my ear that has been going on for about 6 months resulted in me going to the doctor. I say doctor, but actually, because my health insurance is through a university and thus crap, I went to see the nurse, who, although very, very, very (very) nice, did about as good a job as I can do at home. Except she looked in my ears, which I think would be difficult. I think she actually knew less than I do about the way the ear nose and throat works. I have great respect for nurses - there are many members of my family that are nurses. THIS nurse however just told me I had residual effects from my cold and it would go away in a few days. To which I responded NO, it's not. This is something that has been exacerbated by the cold, but it is not the same thing as the cold because I had it BEFORE the cold and it is now AFTER the cold and I still have it.  

"Do you want some antibiotics?"

"I thought you said it wasn't an infection."

"I'll go and talk to someone else."

The nurse practitioner came in after a bit and looked in my ears. Turns out that I have a small amount of fluid in my right ear possibly caused by inflammation due to allergies. And now I have a small brown phial of generic Flonase. 

I'd like to have health insurance that results in me being able to see real doctors with some regularity. In college I went in for a physical examination, done by a nurse practitioner. I had been talking to her about trying some birth control methods (this was before I knew birth control pills made me nuts). She wanted a pregnancy test before she gave me a prescription for anything. Some old lady volunteer took my blood - stabbing me many times. It resulted in nerve damage that lasted six months and made it almost impossible to do up a girth - which I had to do every day, several times a day as it was part of my job.

The nurse practitioner who did the exam got my test results back, shouted them across the waiting room. When I returned to her a week later, complaining about my arm, she squeezed my arms a few times, looked perplexed and said that nothing could have happened when my blood was being drawn, that fit the description of my symptoms. I didn't believe her, but not being the person I am now, I didn't say so. She was wrong, by the way. I checked with an IV nurse. 

This blog is so old it's become self referential.

For lack of any better material, I'm going to point anyone interested to an old entrry (of mine), from back when I was more interesting. Cheap, I know, but it was one of my favourite entries, mainly because of the title.

Have a read.

And then read the follow up.

A Guide To Arguing With Idiots.

I think that this is one of the funniest book covers I've ever seen.

I don't care who you are, republican, libertarian, democrat, communist, independent, whatever. This man is not only a moron, he is dangerous because people listen to him and the filth that he spreads is poisonous. How can anyone take his ramblings seriously?

I'm just pleased that his helpful guide to arguing with idiots has a picture of one on the front for easy identification.

READ HISTORY.

The Third Man on Banjo

I'm trying to convince Ryan to learn this. Possibly my favourite soundtrack from possibly my favourite movie.

EDIT: I keep coming back to my own blog to watch this.

Constance McMillan, Prom is Stupid and You Don't Actually Want to Go.

Apparently there is a girl named Constance McMillan whose desire to take her girlfriend to the prom has caused some consternation and outrage at her school, which resulted in more consternation and outrage after she went to the ACLU.

McMillan was told that she was not allowed to bring her girlfriend as her "date" and if they showed up separately, but danced together, they would be kicked out of the prom. She then approached the ACLU for legal assistance and the school responded by canceling the prom for everyone. Of course I have no evidence of this, but it suggested to me that canceling the prom for everyone was a rather insidious way of getting a bunch of high school kids "on their side".

"You ruined the prom for the rest of us, you big ruiner!"

I have to admit that I can't really understand the fuss. I don't understand why she wanted to go to the prom in the first place, I don't really understand why anyone wants to go to proms. I went to one, it was boring and expensive and I didn't like any of the people there except my boyfriend at the time, who, strangely, insisted that we go in the first place.

I had more fun before prom, hanging out with Margo and drinking champagne. If only we knew what a portent that was.

So, although I stalked the facebook page, because I'm intrigued by the issue, I'm declining to "become a fan". Although I wish McMillan the very best in all her endeavors and I think that it's shitty that she goes to a school run by bigoted idiots, I'm an equal opportunity jerk. I'm not going to support anyone, gay or straight, in the pursuit of such a ridiculous, out dated, overrated tradition that promotes the pervasive high school mentality that out of which, some people never grow. (Once, in high school, during our "brunch" a friend of mine once came to me and said, "My dad told me last night that these were the best years of our lives." We both contemplated the meaning of that, very sadly while hoping that it wasn't true. And, thank goodness, it isn't and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably pumping your gas)

Incidentally, someone on the facebook page actually vehemently suggested more than once that being gay was a "race" because you were born that way. By that mentality, people with Down's syndrome are a race. In fact you could even extrapolate that sentiment to suggest that people with specific hair colours belong to a specific race. Which, as a matter of fact, makes about as much sense as calling black or white a "race" - (excuse my anthropologist geekery) there's only one human race currently in existence and that's ours.

For those interested

I'm ceasing the cooking and making things from this blog and moving it over to a less personal one.

www.incidentalice.wordpress.com.

This is all in preparation for potentially starting to think about maybe selling some preserves on Etsy. I'm going to move Thing A Week there too. I'd like to not scare off potential customers/readers with my rabid atheism, extreme left wing views or my hatred of Garrison Keillor so I'm going to leave that here.

Beluga Lentils in Mirepoix

Mirepoix is a delicious combination of onions, carrots and celery, very common in french cuisine. Traditionally, the ration calls for the same amount of onions as carrots and celery combined - so a 2:1:1 ratio. This evening, we used 2 medium onions. We sauteed our mirepoix this evening in olive oil, added some salt. Once it was cooked down, the onions were translucents and soft and the carrots and celery were a rich and vibrant colour, we stirred in a cup and a half of beluga lentils and enough water to cover the beans by about an inch. Got the beans up to boiling, then turned the burner down to a gentle simmer and left  them, checking them periodically for flavour and doneness. Beluga lentils aren't of the mushy lentil variety - they stay nice and firm when cooked. It's such a simple dish yet so flavourful.

We had simple bowls of it while watching QI, but I imagine it would be nice over rice or mixed into a salad.

Victorian Kitchen Garden

I found this awesome show called "The Victorian Kitchen Garden". It's very inspiring, particularly because we want to do something similar in the future. Some of the wintery growing tips might not be that necessary, if we end up in northern California, however it is nice to know that it's possible to grow a large variety of vegetables and fruit throughout the year with out the expense of living in northern California (it's just a lot more work).

Anyway. The series is from 1987 and features a man named Harry Dodson who was taught by several Victorian head gardeners. He himself was a head gardener for an estate for many years.
 The idea behind Victorian kitchen gardens was that all the vegetables and fruit necessary for the entire year were grown on the estate in various green houses, boxes and plots. Key to this was the Victorian snobbery of wanting to have exotic fruits and vegetables throughout the year, so the gardeners were expected to provide fresh vegetables in the middle of January and things like pineapples, melons, peaches. Dodson revives an old Victorian garden, using Victorian methods over a period of 12 episodes. It's highly entertaining - well, if you're into gardening. My favourite was the chicory or Belgian endive grown in complete darkness and the sea kale grown in giant, clay, bottomless, lidded pots and buried in manure.

***

We planned our plot this morning and I'm sort of in the middle of getting an old wine decanter turned into a mossarium. I have all the bits, I have the gravel down and I'm now trying to explore ways of getting the charcoal, soil and moss down the neck of the decanter without making a huge mess.

We're tracking our gardening expenses this year, so if you include the $26 shiitake mushroom kit that my mother sent to Ryan for his birthday, we're down $78 something dollars.

More Strange Elevators: Vomiting Out of Glass Elevators

I had another strange dream last night. I dreamed I had a long conversation with an old friend in my old bedroom at my parents house. I don't remember much of it, I tried really hard because I was woken up in the middle of it by a dog banging on the heater with his tail, but I do remember him confessing to me that he gets "slightly turned on by people vomiting out of glass elevators."

I had a dream last night, what-what?

From: Alice
To: Ryan
Date: Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 10:00 AM
Subject: dream

I  just remembered a dream I had: a new Cornell lab was opening up in Texas and we were going to have to go there. I kept asking, "For how long?" thinking - 6 months, I could stand, a year, maybe, but not forever! and you were being really evasive, saying things like, "When the projects finished." or "Well they need people there pretty soon."


You were also wearing a silk paisley lounge jacket and an ascot at the time. 
 
I don't want to move to Texas.

From: Ryan
To: Alice
Date: Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 12:26 PM
Subject: dream

"Darling!  Darling.  I think I ought to tell you, we'll be moving to Texas.  New lab and all that, you know?"
"For how long shall we live in Texas?"
"Oh, you know, old sport.  Not long, I should think.  Only until the project is finished, what? ... I don't suppose I could trouble you to mix a stiff W and S?"
"But how long will we be in Texas?"
"Thanks, that hits the old spot.  Nothing like a good W and S, what?"
"How long will we stay in Texas?"
"Well, I say.  They need people there quite soon.  The, uh, intellectual pool is particularly shallow in that part of the continent."

Barnaby

A considerable amount of entries have mentioned my fairly constant companion for the last 4.5 years. Jeeves, Jeeps, Jeevles, Shorty, Short Lumpy, Fatty Lumpkin, House Otter, Nasty Little Grape Eater, Barley Grape, Spotty Furface, Fur Pants, Doggo, Doggo Futzf, Bonk, Bonkles...

I adopted Jeeves from the San Mateo Humane Society (search the page for Jeeves) a little after I dissolved a long term, quite serious relationship. I had come to some sort of conclusion that a dog was a sure thing. I had seen his little picture on the internet and I knew he was the right dog. Jeeves came home with me and for a long time it was just me and him, even for a time after I met Ryan.

Even since we have moved to Ithaca, he and I spend the majority of our time together because I work from home and when I'm not working from home, I'm often at the barn with...Jeeves. 

Well, my fairly constant companion received a constant companion of his own last weekend. Casey buys hay from a man who had little Barnaby chained to a cattle barn. He wasn't miserable - he was perfectly well fed and perfectly healthy. It just seemed like such a sad little existence for such a friendly, exuberant, cheerful little dog. I say little now...but we think he may end up hitting the 50lb mark.

Barnaby. Barnacle, Barnstable, Barnington, Barn-dog, Barnaclese, Barnles...etc

The Chieftains Featuring Ry Cooder

This album is, I fear, going to be like that Prairie Home Companion movie. I can't stand the Chieftains, but I love Ry Cooder, just like I can't stand Garrison Keillor, but I love Robert Altman. Although I never watched Prairie Home Companion, because I didn't think I could manage to sit through 90+ minutes of Garrison Keillor, I am listening to this album. So far, it's not terrible, but I could do without the flute and possibly the fiddle.

Black Beans with Leek over Cauliflower Puree

Cauliflower puree

1 head of cauliflower, "floretted" and the florets chopped
2 potatoes - russet or yukon gold or something similar (ie not a waxy potato), diced
1/4 cup olive oil (approx)
1/2 cup milk or soy milk (approx)
1 cloves garlic minced very finely
salt (to taste)
fresh ground pepper (to taste - I used a little over 1 tsp)

Steam the cauliflower and the potato until quite soft - the cauliflower was softer than I would eat it, were I not planning on purreeing - but I like firm vegetables. Once steamed, drain the water out of the pot and put the cauliflower and potato back in the pot. Start to break it up with a hand mixer. Add olive oil, milk, salt, garlic and pepper and then mix some more until it is smooth. At this point I turned the burner back on and let it cook some more.

Black Beans with leek

Half of the white bit of a large leek (take one large leek, chop off the green end - save that bit for stock - and the root end and use half of that. Or the whole thing, depends on how much you like leeks)
1 can of black beans - or equivalent of soaked, dried beans*
3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
salt
fresh ground pepper

Heat up some oil in a pan. Once it is hot, add the leeks and saute them until they soften. Add the can of beans. Add chopped garlic, salt and pepper and leave to cook in its liquid, while you puree your cauliflower - you may need to add water as the liquid reduces.

Spoon the puree onto a plate and serve the beans on top.

*I've been really doing a good job about presoaking dried beans recently and I find the flavour difference that much more worth it. It's also a better idea as far as environmental impact goes, despite what Nina Shen Rastogi would have you believe - she wrote an article for slate about canned vs dried and forgot to take into consideration the energy required for making the cans and then recycling them or that it is much easier to buy bulk dried beans than bulk canned beans - meaning much less packaging. However, we do have cans of beans on hand, because sometimes you need something quick and filling and nothing does that like a can of beans, heated up, with salt and pepper, lots butter or olive oil, with maybe a teaspoon of vegetable stock if it's handy or whatever else you want to flavour it with (curry, cayenne, oregano, basil, beer...etc).

Proper Snow.

This morning I woke up at 6:15 and looked out the window. There was so much snow! It honestly felt a little like Christmas did when I was small. Not that snow reminds me of Christmas (I've never celebrated Christmas in a place that had average winter temperatures below 40 degrees), but just the excitement of waking up to such a pleasant anticipated treat. I wanted to wake Ryan up and show him, but I thought better of it. He woke up a little anyway, looked out the window and then curled up and went back to sleep. 

This is the kind of snow I was expecting when I first heard about the supposed enormous amounts of snow that Ithaca gets. This is let's-get-out-the-snowshoes-and-go-to-the-woods kind of weather. Let's-get-really-cold-doing-fun-things-outside-and-then-come-in-for-hot-chocolate-kind-of-weather.

Thing A Week and The Supersizers

My Thing A Week plan is going well.

Last week I made this Chocolate Black Tea cake for Ryan's birthday. I substituted walnuts for the hazelnuts (because I had walnuts but no hazelnuts) and made a cocoa frosting for it. I also made a leek and potato pie, but I don't think that counts for Thing A Week because I make vegetable pies all the time. I'm ammending the original stipulations: baking only counts when it's something that I need more practice at (cakes and bread, basically).

Despite it not counting, I'd like to mention the fabulous crust I made with olive oil, water, a little baking soda and vinegar. We already typically make oil crusts instead of butter crusts, but I thought that olive oil might add some nice flavour to complement the potatoes and leeks. The trick was olive oil in the freezer for several hours, following a suggestion I read in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. This makes an excellent butter/fat substitute, if you're interested. I don't like using packaged butter substitutes because most of them are mostly water. You can watch an extreme version of what happens when you try and cook things with fake butter on one of my favourite television shows, The Supersizers* (1:17 is where the point of interest starts and yes, that's real horse that they're cooking):

I think I'd rather go with the full flavour of olive oil than bland, processed "butterine" if I'm not going to use butter itself) Substitute the frozen olive oil into your recipe 1:1 for your normal fat ingredient, and when you are adding that and the water (ice water!) to your flour, bring it together so that it is just barely on the side of incorporated. Mine had this beautiful marbley look to it. Then it goes back in the fridge for an hour before rolling out between two pieces of wax paper (it will stick to counters).

This week's Thing A Week:

A paper mache box to store chopsticks and other kitchen utensils as part of my Organise/Decorate the House on a Budget of Next to Nil plan. I also came across the interesting idea of using contact paper to cover up ugly kitchen cabinet doors when you rent and can't do anything about your hideous dark crappy kitchen cupboards So I'm going to inspect contact paper to see if a) it looks like crap and then b) I can make our kitchen a little cheerier. Only if it's cheap though.


*it's worth watching the whole 2 seasons of this show. Two journalists (Giles Coren and Sue Perkins) spend a week each episode living as if they were in another time in history, wearing the clothes and most importantly, eating the food. My favourite episode is the Supersizers Go Wartime. Giles makes a cake using paraffin and gives American servicemen diarrhea and Sue paints her legs with gravy and eats a pair of stockings.