I have always loved divinity, that "southern" soft and smooth candy that you really can't buy--and it seems hard to make (but it isn't). I like it smooth, with no nuts or cherries in it.
But I'm not much of a purist.
So when I decided I needed to make a batch of divinity, I divided it and made half of the batch vanilla, and half chocolate. I had never heard of chocolate divinity, but I had a recipe for chocolate nougat that my mother recognized right away as divinity that hadn't been whipped long enough.
So, for each dozen or so divinity you want, the recipe, which requires a heavy-duty stand mixer like a Kitchenaid, is:
1 egg white
1 c sugar
1/4 c light corn syrup
1/4 c water
1 pinch salt
1/3 tsp vanilla (opt)
Boil the sugar, corn syrup, water, and salt until they reach soft crack stage. Most recipes say around 275 degrees on the candy thermometer. I don't have a candy thermometer, so I test the candy by drizzling it in cold water. When the drizzles hold their shape and stretch but then crack when you pull on them, they're ready (and the kids LOVE tasting the "ice candy" that comes out of the cold water each time I test the syrup). Set the syrup aside to cool slightly while you whip the egg white until it forms firm but not dry peaks when the beater is lifted. Add the vanilla and mix. Then, while beating on medium low, pour the hot syrup in a fine stream into the egg whites. After the syrup is all in, various sources say to change the speed of the mixer. It's not necessary. Keep it on about a 4 on the kitchen aid (out of 10) until it holds its shape when plopped on a sheet of wax paper. This can take 20 minutes, but it usually takes less if the syrup is cooked long enough and cooled slightly before pouring. Dipping spoon and finger in cold water frequently, spoon blobs of divinity onto wax paper to cool. It should hold its shape perfectly, but not be grainy or dry all the way through.
To make chocolate divinity: Make vanilla divinity, but then, just as the divinity reaches the "finished" stage, dump 1/3-1/2 c chocolate chips into the "dough" and let it mix up. Once the chocolate is in, if the nougat recipe is right, the divinity won't set up any further, so you don't have to worry about over-mixing it.
So those were both such a success that I started getting ideas. I grasped right away that the secret is the hot syrup into the whipped egg whites, so I theorized anything that can be cooked to hard-crack stage and poured in a fine stream could go into whipped egg whites and make divinity.
My first experiment was adding sweetened, peach-flavored gelatin to the sugar mixture--to get flavors, of course. Turns out gelatin prevents sugar from reaching the soft crack stage (at least before it takes on a burnt smell). So it made a lovely, puffy, soft creamy creme, like marshmallow cream, that would have been tasty frosting, I suppose. Didn't work as divinity.
So the next try was to use Brown sugar. It made fabulous syrup. Until it was done and I made the mistake of adding a capful of maple flavoring and a capful of vanilla. That completely ruined the syrup--it almost instantly crystallized into fantastic maple sugar. The kids love it.
I had the egg whites already whipped, so I pulled out my toffee recipe. Unfortunately, I wasn't paying close attention, and I made exactly 1/3 the amount of toffee syrup I needed for the 3 egg whites I whipped, so it never really set up, but the resulting sauce was really really tasty. If I do this again, I'll make the toffee with the 3 cups of requires sugar, but only 1 c of butter (instead of 3) to make the syrup/candy less crumbly.
I gave up for a few days but couldn't put it out of my head, and I realized somethings by looking online at divinity recipes. The secret is that you don't mess with the syrup. You mess with the egg whites if you want variations. You can (and people do) make "Jello Divinity"--by sprinkling the Jello on the egg whites while they whip. That's where you add the flavorings (vanilla is traditional, but I suppose you could add maple, or orange, or lemon, or strawberry, or almond, or brandy--many recipes call for almond flavoring).
So today I wanted to try making "butterscotch" divinity. I made the basic recipe, but, after whipping the eggs, sprinkled in 1/2 c brown sugar, making brown merengue just like on the "Foamy River Brownies" recipe I posted last year. Then I followed the recipe exactly as above (for 3 dozen, so with 3 egg whites), and it came out GREAT. It has a flavor somewhere between butterscotch and that old fashioned "burnt sugar cake" flavor (the "burnt sugar cake" recipe was very popular in folk and fundraiser recipe collections in the 1930s-1950s). It's good.
Next try? I don't know. Strawberry gelatin flavor? Lemon? Maple? Oh--I know. White chocolate. Or butterscotch made with butterscotch chips. Or maybe raspberry chocolate divinity (raspberry jello in the egg whites, and then 1/3 c semi-sweet chocolate chips). Now that I got the formula, I can really start trying things. And I suppose I'd better start giving away candy!
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
Learning to Write takes a LONG Time
I started this novel in earnest in Colorado Springs before Anda's first birthday. She is now 8 weeks away from being 5.
I worry that I am beating a dead horse. I worry that I am doing what some of my friends have done to their novels--editing the life and joy out. I certainly have done too much of changing things to fit other people's ideas.
Now the novel, "done" last week but no longer, is 87,000 words long (versus 214,000 for the 2nd draft), and I have about 10,000 words I can add in before anyone even blinks at the length.
I have learned a lot about writing. First and foremost, there are no rules. But, with that in mind, there are most definitely guidelines.
For example, while characters must be believable, they don't necessarily need to be realistic. What I mean by that is just that we want to read about characters that are Characters as well as people on the street. I mean, if the bad guy is going to be a dumb witch, make her DUMB. But also make her believable (ie she doesn't know she's dumb, and dumb doesn't mean less mean and bad).
Query Letters are movie trailers in print. To learn to write a good query letter, read a couple of agent's blogs about the basics (links on the sidebar can point you to a couple), and then watch a BUNCH of movie trailers.
If it takes a lot to explain the motivations or reasons for an action, there's something wrong in the story (plot, characters, or whatever). When they say every movement in a story needs a motivation, it doesn't mean stretch really far to explain it. The motivation should be clear and obvious to the reader in general.
Don't talk too much--trust your reader.
Don't be afraid to say enough to make it work. Too little is not better than too much.
Readers want to be able to grasp everything the first time through--plot, characters, etc. It's great if there are layers and depth and ideas to explore, and ideally a book should be able to be read with satisfaction many times. But if someone can't grasp it the first time (which is my problem--I can think of all kinds of complexities that are delightful to me, but confusing to others even though it's clear as day in my mind), they aren't going to go back for another try. Or recommend it to others.
While you don't want to write something cliche, there is a great deal in life that constitutes the shared experiences of being human. If you avoid dealing with those things for fear of being cliche, you miss the chance for your reader to connect with your character. Yes a million women have longed for love, and a million authors have written about it. But we still read it because it is one of those shared experiences. I have thought of this in terms of giving birth and raising a baby--it is an incredible, powerful, amazingly unique experience. That a majority of adult women in the world have gone through. To put it another way, there's a reason so so many authors have used the phrase, "Her heart pounded."
As you know if you've read over the years I've been blogging, I have STRUGGLED with the first chapter of my novel. I've rewritten the first five pages five times for every full draft.
I got done with this draft, left it alone for a week intending to leave it for 2 months, and felt compelled to go back and re-read. So I started at the beginning with the end clearly in mind, and discovered that, to my horror, they didn't match! Not only that, the beginning was still BORING. Not just because I've read it before. It just was, all of its own accord. Dreadfully boring.
,
That night, I had a dream that I was turning a quilt edge for binding, and I had come all around back to that first corner, and it was all out of line. I kept trying to turn the edge under on one side, but that would throw all the folds out of line on the other, and no matter what I did, it was awful. I got more and more frustrated in the dream because I couldn't fix "this story" even though I had a quilt in my hands. I woke up and said to myself, "Duh. I just needed to take that corner all apart and re-fold it from scratch. Obviously something is puckered or mucked up inside that is irredeemable simply by holding and pinning.
So I deleted the prologue, introduction, and first five pages and started from scratch.
And Really Liked how they came out--easy, relaxed, to the point, natural, and fitting in tone and style with the new draft, in which I employed all my new writing skills (so the writing is much more interesting to read).
I gave it to Tim, and he pointed out to me all the places it failed. That's why I like him to read my stuff. He just says, "It's not there yet. Here's where I'm getting hung up...." and he KNOWS.
We talked for a long time, and he said, "If a query is like a movie trailer, the first chapter has to be like the song-and-dance number at the beginning of every Disney movie, before the character's parents die." He talked me through it and it was like a light came on in my head. I already knew the concept--the first few pages have to introduce the characters, setting, and problem. But Disney movies do it well, over and over with different stories, and in a straightforward, easy to pick apart way. Lots of examples of application of the same formula--and, going back to that cliche thing--it's a formula that works.
So I went back to the text and realized the problem. It was written when the main character was 16 and the intended audience was 13. But the new draft has the main character 18-19 and the audience the same. Not only does an 18 year old have a different learning curve and thought process than a 16 year old, the 13 year old readers need more spelled out to them than the 18 year olds do. Further, I realized the character's development had changed drastically over the million drafts, and the original "comic throughline" I'd drafted to guide character development (see sidebar for links to that) was completely out of the story.
So I went back to the beginning and opened the comic throughline and started over with "What does the character think she wants and what does she really want?"
To my great relief, the answers were already built into the story. I had written them without knowing it--and in a nice, fleshed out kind of way that I really like.
So that solved the first chapter problem, and that old "how do I make this compelling" problem. The first chapter needs to establish the starting point for the character development that's already happened in the story.
So now I can get started again!
I worry that I am beating a dead horse. I worry that I am doing what some of my friends have done to their novels--editing the life and joy out. I certainly have done too much of changing things to fit other people's ideas.
Now the novel, "done" last week but no longer, is 87,000 words long (versus 214,000 for the 2nd draft), and I have about 10,000 words I can add in before anyone even blinks at the length.
I have learned a lot about writing. First and foremost, there are no rules. But, with that in mind, there are most definitely guidelines.
For example, while characters must be believable, they don't necessarily need to be realistic. What I mean by that is just that we want to read about characters that are Characters as well as people on the street. I mean, if the bad guy is going to be a dumb witch, make her DUMB. But also make her believable (ie she doesn't know she's dumb, and dumb doesn't mean less mean and bad).
Query Letters are movie trailers in print. To learn to write a good query letter, read a couple of agent's blogs about the basics (links on the sidebar can point you to a couple), and then watch a BUNCH of movie trailers.
If it takes a lot to explain the motivations or reasons for an action, there's something wrong in the story (plot, characters, or whatever). When they say every movement in a story needs a motivation, it doesn't mean stretch really far to explain it. The motivation should be clear and obvious to the reader in general.
Don't talk too much--trust your reader.
Don't be afraid to say enough to make it work. Too little is not better than too much.
Readers want to be able to grasp everything the first time through--plot, characters, etc. It's great if there are layers and depth and ideas to explore, and ideally a book should be able to be read with satisfaction many times. But if someone can't grasp it the first time (which is my problem--I can think of all kinds of complexities that are delightful to me, but confusing to others even though it's clear as day in my mind), they aren't going to go back for another try. Or recommend it to others.
While you don't want to write something cliche, there is a great deal in life that constitutes the shared experiences of being human. If you avoid dealing with those things for fear of being cliche, you miss the chance for your reader to connect with your character. Yes a million women have longed for love, and a million authors have written about it. But we still read it because it is one of those shared experiences. I have thought of this in terms of giving birth and raising a baby--it is an incredible, powerful, amazingly unique experience. That a majority of adult women in the world have gone through. To put it another way, there's a reason so so many authors have used the phrase, "Her heart pounded."
As you know if you've read over the years I've been blogging, I have STRUGGLED with the first chapter of my novel. I've rewritten the first five pages five times for every full draft.
I got done with this draft, left it alone for a week intending to leave it for 2 months, and felt compelled to go back and re-read. So I started at the beginning with the end clearly in mind, and discovered that, to my horror, they didn't match! Not only that, the beginning was still BORING. Not just because I've read it before. It just was, all of its own accord. Dreadfully boring.
,
That night, I had a dream that I was turning a quilt edge for binding, and I had come all around back to that first corner, and it was all out of line. I kept trying to turn the edge under on one side, but that would throw all the folds out of line on the other, and no matter what I did, it was awful. I got more and more frustrated in the dream because I couldn't fix "this story" even though I had a quilt in my hands. I woke up and said to myself, "Duh. I just needed to take that corner all apart and re-fold it from scratch. Obviously something is puckered or mucked up inside that is irredeemable simply by holding and pinning.
So I deleted the prologue, introduction, and first five pages and started from scratch.
And Really Liked how they came out--easy, relaxed, to the point, natural, and fitting in tone and style with the new draft, in which I employed all my new writing skills (so the writing is much more interesting to read).
I gave it to Tim, and he pointed out to me all the places it failed. That's why I like him to read my stuff. He just says, "It's not there yet. Here's where I'm getting hung up...." and he KNOWS.
We talked for a long time, and he said, "If a query is like a movie trailer, the first chapter has to be like the song-and-dance number at the beginning of every Disney movie, before the character's parents die." He talked me through it and it was like a light came on in my head. I already knew the concept--the first few pages have to introduce the characters, setting, and problem. But Disney movies do it well, over and over with different stories, and in a straightforward, easy to pick apart way. Lots of examples of application of the same formula--and, going back to that cliche thing--it's a formula that works.
So I went back to the text and realized the problem. It was written when the main character was 16 and the intended audience was 13. But the new draft has the main character 18-19 and the audience the same. Not only does an 18 year old have a different learning curve and thought process than a 16 year old, the 13 year old readers need more spelled out to them than the 18 year olds do. Further, I realized the character's development had changed drastically over the million drafts, and the original "comic throughline" I'd drafted to guide character development (see sidebar for links to that) was completely out of the story.
So I went back to the beginning and opened the comic throughline and started over with "What does the character think she wants and what does she really want?"
To my great relief, the answers were already built into the story. I had written them without knowing it--and in a nice, fleshed out kind of way that I really like.
So that solved the first chapter problem, and that old "how do I make this compelling" problem. The first chapter needs to establish the starting point for the character development that's already happened in the story.
So now I can get started again!
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Science Songs for Kids
Time for Learning's demos for the playground have a "Hurricane" song that Anda just loves. So today I googled "science songs for kids" and found the source: a series of records full of science songs for kids, with music reminiscent at times of the sixties folk song tradition and at times of the title song of "the Blob" (click below if you haven't seen it--skip to 1:10 for the vocals--they're the good part!)
The Science Songs for kids can be found here: http://www.acme.com/jef/singing_science/
I am generally opposed to pirating songs (since I'm married to a musician), and I don't know the legal status of these. I suspect they are the equivalent of "abandonware" (software that is technically still owned by the company, but it no longer produced or supported by them and is only available by "pirated" download or purchase at a thrift store), or books that have gone out of print and can't be found anywhere but are still under copyright (so they can't be republished and distributed by, say, a fan society).
This is really fun stuff. We especially were smitten with the song about how to make heat, and the hurricane song, and....well, just go listen. It's a riot.
The Science Songs for kids can be found here: http://www.acme.com/jef/singing_science/
I am generally opposed to pirating songs (since I'm married to a musician), and I don't know the legal status of these. I suspect they are the equivalent of "abandonware" (software that is technically still owned by the company, but it no longer produced or supported by them and is only available by "pirated" download or purchase at a thrift store), or books that have gone out of print and can't be found anywhere but are still under copyright (so they can't be republished and distributed by, say, a fan society).
This is really fun stuff. We especially were smitten with the song about how to make heat, and the hurricane song, and....well, just go listen. It's a riot.
Monday, April 14, 2008
TaxTime
Funny tax situation this year left Tim "married filing separately". His taxable income was just under $1600. The tax he owes? Just over $1400. Yes, the government gets 91.5% of our Taxable Income this year. Pretty steep tax, no? Especially when you remember that we were essentially unemployed all of 2007.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Packing Again
So here I am, repacking everything so we can move again. I hate moving. A move out of state almost demands a double move though because you really have to be there to know where you want to settle down.
Thus, packing again.
I was watching Craigslist obsessively, and I still stared at the house announcement off and on for an hour before I decided to call on it. There was nothing unique about that particular announcement except that is was dead in the center of the area I was looking in for a house. I couldn't let it go, though, so I called and we like the house and the manager and the owner, and I guess they liked us because we sign the papers tomorrow. With taxes coming due, it's a lousy time to come up with a deposit, that's for sure, but the house is totally worth it to us.
It is a 1976 house, 1920 square feet on one level, with a security fence in the back yard, big driveway, four bedrooms, three living rooms, two bathrooms, and a porch covered with grape vines that produce table grapes. There's also an enormous mulberry tree that shades the house and driveway, and a fig tree in the back yard, and a shed for storage, and floor plan I like (walk into the parlor, but can't see the kitchen or toy room from there!). So we're moving again, this time to Spring Valley (an "unincorporated" part of Las Vegas--lots of this city is not incorporated and instead falls into townships, including the area that The Strip is on--technically, and ironically, it is in a township called Paradise).
The new house is just around the corner from the church, just like we love.
Some people have asked why we're moving again. It was needed. I can tell you, I won't miss having the landscapers throw away the kids toys (I know the ball looked a little flat, but it was Ben's favorite because he could pick it up, and it was Anda's friend--it even had a face). I won't miss the stairs, or Daniel making me walk him past every smoke alarm in the house because it might turn on. I won't miss the smoke alarm going on whenever we bake. I won't miss the oven melting my plastics because it vents improperly. I won't miss the neighbor's tall houses looking over into our yard constantly. I won't miss having to drive to church. I won't miss the light-colored laminate floor that shows all the dirt. I won't miss the stairs. I won't miss having only one bathroom on the "living" floor. I won't miss the floor plan, or the master bathroom that's bigger than the kitchen, or the kitchen that has too high of cupboards and counters and no floor space, or the the dishwasher that leaves a nearly irremovable residue on the dishes or else leaves a white powder coating them, or the high ceilings and correspondingly high utilities costs, or the rooms that are too big so that 2000 square feet acts like about 800 in terms of usefulness, or the lack of place to put the clothes, or having no place for visitors to go that isn't toy space.
The clincher was the day I discovered my temple dress got wet during the first move, and I hadn't noticed, so it was mildewed. Online it said sunshine cures mildew, so I washed my dress and carefully laid it out on a blanket in the evening so that it would get the benefit of the bright Las Vegas sunshine in the back yard all morning. In the morning, I found my Temple Dress wadded up in a ball and tossed into the house. I was offended on so many levels it was unbelievable. Not only had someone touched my Temple Dress, they had wadded it up. AND they had entered my house without my permission. I thought having landscapers care for the yard would be heavenly. Turns out it has been just one more layer of privacy stripped away.
Plus they didn't tell us the day they fertilized, so my kids played barefoot on the lawn all that day (and Benj put lots of stuff in his mouth). I found out a week later from the neighbors across the street!
I realize there will be things I hate at the next house. I suppose I'll miss having a guest house. Hopefully that's all.
So I'm packing again, excited to go to a place that has more potentially livable space than this, but sad to put my current landlords in dire straights the day their baby is due.
Thus, packing again.
I was watching Craigslist obsessively, and I still stared at the house announcement off and on for an hour before I decided to call on it. There was nothing unique about that particular announcement except that is was dead in the center of the area I was looking in for a house. I couldn't let it go, though, so I called and we like the house and the manager and the owner, and I guess they liked us because we sign the papers tomorrow. With taxes coming due, it's a lousy time to come up with a deposit, that's for sure, but the house is totally worth it to us.
It is a 1976 house, 1920 square feet on one level, with a security fence in the back yard, big driveway, four bedrooms, three living rooms, two bathrooms, and a porch covered with grape vines that produce table grapes. There's also an enormous mulberry tree that shades the house and driveway, and a fig tree in the back yard, and a shed for storage, and floor plan I like (walk into the parlor, but can't see the kitchen or toy room from there!). So we're moving again, this time to Spring Valley (an "unincorporated" part of Las Vegas--lots of this city is not incorporated and instead falls into townships, including the area that The Strip is on--technically, and ironically, it is in a township called Paradise).
The new house is just around the corner from the church, just like we love.
Some people have asked why we're moving again. It was needed. I can tell you, I won't miss having the landscapers throw away the kids toys (I know the ball looked a little flat, but it was Ben's favorite because he could pick it up, and it was Anda's friend--it even had a face). I won't miss the stairs, or Daniel making me walk him past every smoke alarm in the house because it might turn on. I won't miss the smoke alarm going on whenever we bake. I won't miss the oven melting my plastics because it vents improperly. I won't miss the neighbor's tall houses looking over into our yard constantly. I won't miss having to drive to church. I won't miss the light-colored laminate floor that shows all the dirt. I won't miss the stairs. I won't miss having only one bathroom on the "living" floor. I won't miss the floor plan, or the master bathroom that's bigger than the kitchen, or the kitchen that has too high of cupboards and counters and no floor space, or the the dishwasher that leaves a nearly irremovable residue on the dishes or else leaves a white powder coating them, or the high ceilings and correspondingly high utilities costs, or the rooms that are too big so that 2000 square feet acts like about 800 in terms of usefulness, or the lack of place to put the clothes, or having no place for visitors to go that isn't toy space.
The clincher was the day I discovered my temple dress got wet during the first move, and I hadn't noticed, so it was mildewed. Online it said sunshine cures mildew, so I washed my dress and carefully laid it out on a blanket in the evening so that it would get the benefit of the bright Las Vegas sunshine in the back yard all morning. In the morning, I found my Temple Dress wadded up in a ball and tossed into the house. I was offended on so many levels it was unbelievable. Not only had someone touched my Temple Dress, they had wadded it up. AND they had entered my house without my permission. I thought having landscapers care for the yard would be heavenly. Turns out it has been just one more layer of privacy stripped away.
Plus they didn't tell us the day they fertilized, so my kids played barefoot on the lawn all that day (and Benj put lots of stuff in his mouth). I found out a week later from the neighbors across the street!
I realize there will be things I hate at the next house. I suppose I'll miss having a guest house. Hopefully that's all.
So I'm packing again, excited to go to a place that has more potentially livable space than this, but sad to put my current landlords in dire straights the day their baby is due.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Shoes
I went to Savers yesterday to find sandals for all the kids. The Savers near our new house also happens to be on the line of one of the ritziest neighborhoods in Vegas, so it actually had GREAT shoes. Really expensive ones (Diesel, Puma) in size 13, which almost never happens. And, in a great miracle, there actually were sandals for everyone of the kids. So we went to look for shoes for me and I found two pair of clogs.
I've never been fond of clogs, but I'd heard these brands were great, so I tried them on.
And fell in love with them.
Because of the fibromyalgia, it is extremely difficult for me to find shoes that don't leave my whole body hurting like crazy, but these worked like a charm, so that I want to wear them.
The first was a pair of looked-brand-new light suede Eccos. They are incredibly designed so that they stay on without any stress to your feet, and the heel is just the right height, and they actually look really nice even though they're comfortable. The second pair was a chocolate brown pair of Merrells, which my sis-in-law told me are fabulous and she was right. They're soft inside, so I feel like my feet are being cradled in cushions, but they still have the support I need and look nice on.
I count it a miracle. Well worth the $35 I paid for both pair, especially considering new they would have cost me over $150.
So there you have it: Ecco clogs: A+ shoes; Merrell clogs ("Jungle Primo" style): different, but also A+ shoes.
I've never been fond of clogs, but I'd heard these brands were great, so I tried them on.
And fell in love with them.
Because of the fibromyalgia, it is extremely difficult for me to find shoes that don't leave my whole body hurting like crazy, but these worked like a charm, so that I want to wear them.
The first was a pair of looked-brand-new light suede Eccos. They are incredibly designed so that they stay on without any stress to your feet, and the heel is just the right height, and they actually look really nice even though they're comfortable. The second pair was a chocolate brown pair of Merrells, which my sis-in-law told me are fabulous and she was right. They're soft inside, so I feel like my feet are being cradled in cushions, but they still have the support I need and look nice on.
I count it a miracle. Well worth the $35 I paid for both pair, especially considering new they would have cost me over $150.
So there you have it: Ecco clogs: A+ shoes; Merrell clogs ("Jungle Primo" style): different, but also A+ shoes.
The new Nigerian Scam, and a way to look at things....
Tim's commercial project right now deals heavily with Spam emails, so we've been reading some. Okay, a lot.
Many of you are probably familiar with the old Nigerian Scam, which predates the internet. You can read more about it here: http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/nigeria.asp
I got a new twist on this scam yesterday in my spam box. It said that the UN has approved compensatory payments for victims of Nigerian scams. Just send along your bank account information.....
Now the fraudsters are choosing their target audience more carefully--people who believed it the first time and are anxious to get their money back. And, presumably, gullible enough to fall for it again.
Reading all the spam emails has led us to a few sites that illustrate more literal meanings of the often euphemism-laden spam emails, with hilarious (although not always sparklingly clean) results. This is one of the cleaner ones: http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/316
And one that sounds "dirty" but they changed how you see it: http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/31
or http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/16
So, after looking at all these, I started seeing all the undesirable ads in Vegas in a whole new way. For example, right at our exit from the freeway to the Strip is a big billboard of male strippers showing off their bodies. The last time I looked at it, I suddenly saw them without their skins on, showing off their muscles and stomachs, and bones. I mean, if you're going to show off your body....
The other that struck me funny is a big picture of a showgirl from the back. Looks like a proctologists' ad to me--so now when we drive by I hardly notice it's there. Big sign for a doctor's office is all.....
How we manage to adapt is amazing, isn't it?
Many of you are probably familiar with the old Nigerian Scam, which predates the internet. You can read more about it here: http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/nigeria.asp
I got a new twist on this scam yesterday in my spam box. It said that the UN has approved compensatory payments for victims of Nigerian scams. Just send along your bank account information.....
Now the fraudsters are choosing their target audience more carefully--people who believed it the first time and are anxious to get their money back. And, presumably, gullible enough to fall for it again.
Reading all the spam emails has led us to a few sites that illustrate more literal meanings of the often euphemism-laden spam emails, with hilarious (although not always sparklingly clean) results. This is one of the cleaner ones: http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/316
And one that sounds "dirty" but they changed how you see it: http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/31
or http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/16
So, after looking at all these, I started seeing all the undesirable ads in Vegas in a whole new way. For example, right at our exit from the freeway to the Strip is a big billboard of male strippers showing off their bodies. The last time I looked at it, I suddenly saw them without their skins on, showing off their muscles and stomachs, and bones. I mean, if you're going to show off your body....
The other that struck me funny is a big picture of a showgirl from the back. Looks like a proctologists' ad to me--so now when we drive by I hardly notice it's there. Big sign for a doctor's office is all.....
How we manage to adapt is amazing, isn't it?
Chaos Week
The last three days have been unbelievably emotional. Not all good, not all bad, just all intense.
We found a different house to rent right where I was looking that fit all the list of characteristics I didn't think were possible to find, including nearly 2000 square feet on one level, with a safe fenced yard that is bigger than the one we have (but still small, unfortunately), and lots of spaces that are very functional for us. We filled the application and the owner of the house liked us and the property management co liked our credit scores, so we are moving in a month, to the great distress of our current landlords.
The contract arrived, was signed, and was sent back for Tim's first composition that is getting published--the "Pirate Song," for men's chorus, to be published by Alliance Publishing. Very exciting.
My brother-in-law had surgery and the recovery has been full of complications.
My brother had a birthday! Hooray!
My parents found a wonderful house to buy and managed to get a loan squared away for it, so they are moving and selling their current house.
My sister is also moving because her lease is up and my parents' new house is big enough for her to get into, too.
Tim is filming his first commercial for a non-music product--and he wrote all the music for the commercial, which will be released on youtube as soon as it's done. I'll embed it on my blog so you all can see.
My brother just returned from South America, where he was doing a service Spring Break.
And, just when the publishing contract went out in the mail, the house loan came in, the brother-in-law was sent home with his IV still in his arm, the brother got home from the airport, the music project was 80% completed, the notices given we and my sister are moving, the other brother's birthday dinner was about to commence, my very elderly grandpa died.
That, in and of itself, is one of those bittersweet, deeply emotional things. His body had been falling apart for years, and we expected him to die last December, and he is finally free of pain and suffering. But death is never sweet for those left behind, even though I can't say that I feel sorrow. Just intense emotion. I just know he's happy, talking to his brothers who died in World War II, released from pain and the prison his body had become. And those thoughts bring me to tears more than sorrow would.
It has driven me to ponder mortality, though, as I look at my babies and think that someday they will be the gray-haired men surrounding my bed while I die.
And when that happens, I hope they joke and laugh and talk cheerfully to one another instead of mourning and fussing and being quiet and "reverent" and trying to make it a solemn, "spiritual" occasion. I can't think of a better way to go than hearing my children happily being a family still, laughing and talking and doing what they do when they are happy and together. It's those "normal" happy sounds that tell me now that everything is as it should be--those are the sounds that are sweetest to my ears--and that's what I want to hear when I am dying so that I will know that they will go on being a family even when I am not there to direct things anymore. That would be far more comforting than anything else I can think of--just to know that everyone else is okay, too. And that, I hear, is just what Grandpa got.
As Christina Rossetti said, "When I am dead, my dearest, sing no sad songs for me." I don't mind if you sing, of course. Just make it Skook and the Pirate Song, would you? I don't want to be made to feel guilty for dying and leaving everyone miserable.
When it comes to that. When my hairs are white and my body tired and its time to go. Not any time soon.
We found a different house to rent right where I was looking that fit all the list of characteristics I didn't think were possible to find, including nearly 2000 square feet on one level, with a safe fenced yard that is bigger than the one we have (but still small, unfortunately), and lots of spaces that are very functional for us. We filled the application and the owner of the house liked us and the property management co liked our credit scores, so we are moving in a month, to the great distress of our current landlords.
The contract arrived, was signed, and was sent back for Tim's first composition that is getting published--the "Pirate Song," for men's chorus, to be published by Alliance Publishing. Very exciting.
My brother-in-law had surgery and the recovery has been full of complications.
My brother had a birthday! Hooray!
My parents found a wonderful house to buy and managed to get a loan squared away for it, so they are moving and selling their current house.
My sister is also moving because her lease is up and my parents' new house is big enough for her to get into, too.
Tim is filming his first commercial for a non-music product--and he wrote all the music for the commercial, which will be released on youtube as soon as it's done. I'll embed it on my blog so you all can see.
My brother just returned from South America, where he was doing a service Spring Break.
And, just when the publishing contract went out in the mail, the house loan came in, the brother-in-law was sent home with his IV still in his arm, the brother got home from the airport, the music project was 80% completed, the notices given we and my sister are moving, the other brother's birthday dinner was about to commence, my very elderly grandpa died.
That, in and of itself, is one of those bittersweet, deeply emotional things. His body had been falling apart for years, and we expected him to die last December, and he is finally free of pain and suffering. But death is never sweet for those left behind, even though I can't say that I feel sorrow. Just intense emotion. I just know he's happy, talking to his brothers who died in World War II, released from pain and the prison his body had become. And those thoughts bring me to tears more than sorrow would.
It has driven me to ponder mortality, though, as I look at my babies and think that someday they will be the gray-haired men surrounding my bed while I die.
And when that happens, I hope they joke and laugh and talk cheerfully to one another instead of mourning and fussing and being quiet and "reverent" and trying to make it a solemn, "spiritual" occasion. I can't think of a better way to go than hearing my children happily being a family still, laughing and talking and doing what they do when they are happy and together. It's those "normal" happy sounds that tell me now that everything is as it should be--those are the sounds that are sweetest to my ears--and that's what I want to hear when I am dying so that I will know that they will go on being a family even when I am not there to direct things anymore. That would be far more comforting than anything else I can think of--just to know that everyone else is okay, too. And that, I hear, is just what Grandpa got.
As Christina Rossetti said, "When I am dead, my dearest, sing no sad songs for me." I don't mind if you sing, of course. Just make it Skook and the Pirate Song, would you? I don't want to be made to feel guilty for dying and leaving everyone miserable.
When it comes to that. When my hairs are white and my body tired and its time to go. Not any time soon.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Terry Fator
Stuck in my novel again. This time I'm trying to figure out the logistics of two women lowering a 150-200 lb frog out a window that is at least 3 storys up, with only a rope, a four-poster bed, a stool, and a fabric bag. I know in theory how it might work, but having never dealt with anything that small and yet that dense, I don't know the realities of it. Of course, it isn't real at all--it's fiction--so the "realities" of it are not real, but it needs to feel authentic. To complicate things, the frog is actually a prince who is married to one of the women, so they can't hurt him, and the women have been up all night, so they're tired.
I never thought that I would be using my mental gifts to solve impossible problems that could never exist in real life that I just made up in the first place.
So last night we went to see Terry Fator's show at the Hilton Showroom. Terry is the guy who won America's Got Talent. He said the Hilton Showroom is the same stage that Elvis was on last time he was in Vegas (he himself, not Trent Carlini or one of the other impersonators). We got comped in because Terry's agent is also the agent who got moosebutter on tour to all those state fairs, and he and Tim have kept in touch and intend to work together more on future projects. And the agent is LDS, so we have a lot in common on those grounds. Nice guy, too.
As usual with comps for friends and family of the performers, we got VIP tickets. This always makes me laugh. Our seats were right on the stage, off to Stage Right in an extended part of the stage, not really in front but not on the side either. VIP tickets are almost always the worst seats in the house, and this was no different. We could see Terry fold up his puppets and chuck them into the cabinet after each "visit". We could see the puppets some, but not full-on without watching the screen, which was right in front of us. Up close, but bad view. Even the V-Theater has terrible seats reserved as "VIP" seats. Real VIPs, though, get put in the best seats in the house. I think mostly those VIP tickets with bad seats are for people who want to pay more to feel important. And, to the agent's credit, he tried to get us the best seats in the house but they were already sold out. (It ended up okay--the VIP section was mostly empty, so it was okay that Caleb kept jumping up and sitting back down and Anda was real squirmy--the babies were perfectly behaved, though).
It was a great show. Really really fun. I loved the puppet impersonations, and was fairly impressed with the speed of his banter. He had some great jokes, told well, so that even I laughed, and I rarely do at shows. The show wasn't perfect by any means. It was about an hour too long, and I really didn't like his Michael Jackson impersonation. REALLY didn't like it--to the point that I found it embarrassing that he was doing it and kept thinking that Paul Sperrazza, in Toxic Audio, is SO much better at Michael Jackson that Terry couldn't even compete at all. At ALL. The band leader in the background was so dynamic that his motions drew my eye away from the action, but that was probably because I could see him better than Terry and the Puppets. He did have a live band, though, and that was cool. I thought he chose his material (except for MJ) perfectly. The things that he did best were the old standard ventriloquist jokes (setting it up, for example, for the dummy to call the puppeteer a dummy), which didn't feel old or tired when he did them. His very best bits were when the puppets were doing impersonations. That was cool. Overall, I liked the show. It should have been a more standard Vegas 70 minutes, but the audience seemed to truly love it.
Terry is all over YouTube, but this video is one that had none of the "America's Got Talent" human interest stuff tacked on. It's just the puppet, so you'll have an idea of what we saw. Very cool. Two hours of it was bum-numbing.
It was cool to try to wrap my brain around the fact that I knew--and he made it clear--that he was doing the voices for himself and for the puppet, but I still believed it when they had an argument--even when the argument was about whether or not the puppet could do something Terry couldn't, and if the puppet was real or not. He was arguing with himself about whether or not his puppet was a real person. It was interesting because it forced the audience to come face to face with the fact that characters are real to us even though we know they aren't real. As Tim put it, it's one of the few times we get to simultaneously believe and not believe something, and that is part of the humor of the experience.
Oh, and this was the first time I've seen real live showgirls in action. They really do wear feathers on their heads. And one of the eight was actually a good dancer, although she hardly had a chance to dance--they all looked worried that if they tipped their heads, the feathers would tumble off. And only one didn't have "rolls" on her sides and back when she moved. So I guess they were mostly real girls in stupid costumes and too much makeup. Hope they got paid well for their two minutes on stage, cuz I doubt it was furthering anyone's careers much to have them there. What a weird city!
We had to walk through the casino to get to the showroom. I told Tim that if his show was in that kind of theater, I wouldn't go or recommend it to my friends because of the casino. He said he wouldn't have taken the job if he hadn't known the V Theater was in a mall, not a casino, and I was glad. It would be hard to rest easy at night if part of your job was to use your God-given talents to draw people in to gamble. As it is, Tim's job now is to help create a little edifying oasis in the middle of a pretty anti-spiritual place.
I never thought that I would be using my mental gifts to solve impossible problems that could never exist in real life that I just made up in the first place.
So last night we went to see Terry Fator's show at the Hilton Showroom. Terry is the guy who won America's Got Talent. He said the Hilton Showroom is the same stage that Elvis was on last time he was in Vegas (he himself, not Trent Carlini or one of the other impersonators). We got comped in because Terry's agent is also the agent who got moosebutter on tour to all those state fairs, and he and Tim have kept in touch and intend to work together more on future projects. And the agent is LDS, so we have a lot in common on those grounds. Nice guy, too.
As usual with comps for friends and family of the performers, we got VIP tickets. This always makes me laugh. Our seats were right on the stage, off to Stage Right in an extended part of the stage, not really in front but not on the side either. VIP tickets are almost always the worst seats in the house, and this was no different. We could see Terry fold up his puppets and chuck them into the cabinet after each "visit". We could see the puppets some, but not full-on without watching the screen, which was right in front of us. Up close, but bad view. Even the V-Theater has terrible seats reserved as "VIP" seats. Real VIPs, though, get put in the best seats in the house. I think mostly those VIP tickets with bad seats are for people who want to pay more to feel important. And, to the agent's credit, he tried to get us the best seats in the house but they were already sold out. (It ended up okay--the VIP section was mostly empty, so it was okay that Caleb kept jumping up and sitting back down and Anda was real squirmy--the babies were perfectly behaved, though).
It was a great show. Really really fun. I loved the puppet impersonations, and was fairly impressed with the speed of his banter. He had some great jokes, told well, so that even I laughed, and I rarely do at shows. The show wasn't perfect by any means. It was about an hour too long, and I really didn't like his Michael Jackson impersonation. REALLY didn't like it--to the point that I found it embarrassing that he was doing it and kept thinking that Paul Sperrazza, in Toxic Audio, is SO much better at Michael Jackson that Terry couldn't even compete at all. At ALL. The band leader in the background was so dynamic that his motions drew my eye away from the action, but that was probably because I could see him better than Terry and the Puppets. He did have a live band, though, and that was cool. I thought he chose his material (except for MJ) perfectly. The things that he did best were the old standard ventriloquist jokes (setting it up, for example, for the dummy to call the puppeteer a dummy), which didn't feel old or tired when he did them. His very best bits were when the puppets were doing impersonations. That was cool. Overall, I liked the show. It should have been a more standard Vegas 70 minutes, but the audience seemed to truly love it.
Terry is all over YouTube, but this video is one that had none of the "America's Got Talent" human interest stuff tacked on. It's just the puppet, so you'll have an idea of what we saw. Very cool. Two hours of it was bum-numbing.
It was cool to try to wrap my brain around the fact that I knew--and he made it clear--that he was doing the voices for himself and for the puppet, but I still believed it when they had an argument--even when the argument was about whether or not the puppet could do something Terry couldn't, and if the puppet was real or not. He was arguing with himself about whether or not his puppet was a real person. It was interesting because it forced the audience to come face to face with the fact that characters are real to us even though we know they aren't real. As Tim put it, it's one of the few times we get to simultaneously believe and not believe something, and that is part of the humor of the experience.
Oh, and this was the first time I've seen real live showgirls in action. They really do wear feathers on their heads. And one of the eight was actually a good dancer, although she hardly had a chance to dance--they all looked worried that if they tipped their heads, the feathers would tumble off. And only one didn't have "rolls" on her sides and back when she moved. So I guess they were mostly real girls in stupid costumes and too much makeup. Hope they got paid well for their two minutes on stage, cuz I doubt it was furthering anyone's careers much to have them there. What a weird city!
We had to walk through the casino to get to the showroom. I told Tim that if his show was in that kind of theater, I wouldn't go or recommend it to my friends because of the casino. He said he wouldn't have taken the job if he hadn't known the V Theater was in a mall, not a casino, and I was glad. It would be hard to rest easy at night if part of your job was to use your God-given talents to draw people in to gamble. As it is, Tim's job now is to help create a little edifying oasis in the middle of a pretty anti-spiritual place.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Walking on the Strip
I realized I haven't said much lately. Sorry about that. Moving is traumatic for all of us, and we're just now getting adjusted.
Today the inlaws went to see Toxic Audio. This is the last month the show will run at 6:00. After March 31, the show will be at the same place, but at 5:30 because they have put some new shows in there and shuffled some others to be a different times, including Toxic. The show, which was great to begin with, has just gotten better. I like the new costumes better, and the cast really looks like they're having a ton of fun doing the show. So I was excited for Tim's parents and sister and her family to see the show.
Meanwhile, we went to look for the "showbot"--a robot that has recently taken up residence at the Miracle Mile that advertises the show. It wasn't there today. The kids and I were disappointed. It apparently is cool enough that it's done a stint at Epcot Center, in Florida, so were were excited to see it. We'll go back another time to catch it, I suppose. We did see the Captain Jack that gets pictures with people outside the V Theater. I don't know if it's one actor or many, but he's really GOOD. Fun to watch, and gets pictures with people all the time for free. We also saw the end of the laser show. We like that--Anda dances to the music on the big dance floor under the lasers. We missed the rainstorm, but had a great time watching the construction equipment working just below the balcony outside the bathrooms.
Anyway, the kids and I didn't see the show tonight, but we were there waiting for everyone else to see (and be in) it, so we decided to walk to the M&Ms store that's just a few stops down the strip. Everyone's always carrying bags from there, so we thought it might be cool. (The other day we were watching the traveling masses pass in front of us at a light and I commented that most of these people weren't locals. Caleb said, "How do you know?" Anda said, "Is it because locals don't carry those M&Ms bags?" I looked, and sure enough, everyone crossing the street in front of us was carrying the distinctive bright yellow bags! It was funny. It was even funnier the next day when I discovered that the kids thought I had said "vocals." "None of these people are vocals." They know vocals. They had no idea what "locals" meant, nor why I would identify vocalists as their product).
What we discovered in trying to get to the M&Ms store is that everything in Vegas has been supersized. So, while the M&Ms store is just a couple of "doors" down, it's more than a mile away from the V Theater. It was an unbelievably long, hot walk. Then the store was so crowded we managed to knock all the puzzles off a shelf, and it was hot, and there wasn't anything worth looking at, unless you are a fan of kitschy fridge magnets.
Hot and tired, we went up to the food court to look for drinks. There was a Wendy's so we stood in line and ordered frosties. Just as the guy said, "7.71", Benjamin peed and it exploded out his diaper. Being a mom, I caught it in my hand. Being Pee, it escaped all over the floor and down my front. The other, clean, hand was holding $25 in cash, so I told the guy to just take that so his hands would be clean. He did. And gave me $2.29 in change. I said, "I gave you $25." He said, "You gave me a ten." I said, "I didn't even HAVE a ten!" So he took the whole $25 and gave it back to me. I said, "Now I have $27 and change, and I owe you for the frosties still." He said, "You do?" "Yes. Here's your change back." Then he was totally confused, even though I had completely negated the entire financial transaction and we were back where we started. He called the manager over, who cancelled it all and started over. "Don't you know math?!" the manager said. "NO!" the cashier said. So they rang me up again. Meanwhile, the line behind me was getting longer and the frosties were melting. They put into the computer that I gave them $25 and they were going to give me $17 or so in change. I said, "I don't have to give you $25. You're just going to give me the five back." Then I looked them each in the face and said wearily, "Never mind." and handed over the $25 and they gave me $17.29 and I took the frosties and we left.
I don't know if it was on the walk there or the walk back when we had just come to a bus stop with a bench. A tall, wiry guy suddenly jumped up and turned to the bench and said, "Watch my stuff, man. Don't let anyone take my junk!" And he dashed away. By then I was up at the bench and I looked over--and there was a bunch of little junk arranged on the bench, and an empty suit coat that completely DIDN'T match what the man had been wearing, and NO PERSON on the bench. I was glad the kids missed the whole thing. I wasn't sure how I would explain that to them!
We saw a guy who was supposed to be a living statue, but he was so busy getting pictures with people that he just looked like a silver man. There was also a couple of live M&Ms and a giant-headed Elvis down there.
We got back to the theater just at the right time, and the show was just done. Gina, who works there and is an absolute angel, had some coloring toys for the kids, so they sat down and colored quietly. Gina has been a mother's lifesaver more than once. That woman deserves a raise for how well she treats guests there. And me.
We had called ahead because we were bringing at least 13 people to a pizza place. It turned out it was a little cart in a casino. Why the lady didn't mention to me that they couldn't even SEAT 13 people because there were no seats at all was a mystery to me. We ended up at the Metro Pizza on Flamingo and Decatur, and they had GREAT pizza. Unbelievably good. The stuffed pizza was my favorite. The kids loved the cheese, pepperoni, and mushroom pizzas. All together it was good and they were extremely good with the kids, and tolerant with them running around and being messy. IT was really fun. In some ways it felt like when both families of a couple get together at the odd "everyone's here and we've already met a couple times" times in your life, like baptisms. Our Toxic family was interacting with our Jones family, and it all went pleasantly, but was really kind of odd to experience and watch. Not at all awkward, thanks to everyone being friendly and relaxed. Just odd.
Inlaws liked the show. We liked seeing them.
It was kind of an insane day, though. Oh, I forgot to mention that lunch was a picnic in the park. We were really busy all day. Now I'm really really tired.
Today the inlaws went to see Toxic Audio. This is the last month the show will run at 6:00. After March 31, the show will be at the same place, but at 5:30 because they have put some new shows in there and shuffled some others to be a different times, including Toxic. The show, which was great to begin with, has just gotten better. I like the new costumes better, and the cast really looks like they're having a ton of fun doing the show. So I was excited for Tim's parents and sister and her family to see the show.
Meanwhile, we went to look for the "showbot"--a robot that has recently taken up residence at the Miracle Mile that advertises the show. It wasn't there today. The kids and I were disappointed. It apparently is cool enough that it's done a stint at Epcot Center, in Florida, so were were excited to see it. We'll go back another time to catch it, I suppose. We did see the Captain Jack that gets pictures with people outside the V Theater. I don't know if it's one actor or many, but he's really GOOD. Fun to watch, and gets pictures with people all the time for free. We also saw the end of the laser show. We like that--Anda dances to the music on the big dance floor under the lasers. We missed the rainstorm, but had a great time watching the construction equipment working just below the balcony outside the bathrooms.
Anyway, the kids and I didn't see the show tonight, but we were there waiting for everyone else to see (and be in) it, so we decided to walk to the M&Ms store that's just a few stops down the strip. Everyone's always carrying bags from there, so we thought it might be cool. (The other day we were watching the traveling masses pass in front of us at a light and I commented that most of these people weren't locals. Caleb said, "How do you know?" Anda said, "Is it because locals don't carry those M&Ms bags?" I looked, and sure enough, everyone crossing the street in front of us was carrying the distinctive bright yellow bags! It was funny. It was even funnier the next day when I discovered that the kids thought I had said "vocals." "None of these people are vocals." They know vocals. They had no idea what "locals" meant, nor why I would identify vocalists as their product).
What we discovered in trying to get to the M&Ms store is that everything in Vegas has been supersized. So, while the M&Ms store is just a couple of "doors" down, it's more than a mile away from the V Theater. It was an unbelievably long, hot walk. Then the store was so crowded we managed to knock all the puzzles off a shelf, and it was hot, and there wasn't anything worth looking at, unless you are a fan of kitschy fridge magnets.
Hot and tired, we went up to the food court to look for drinks. There was a Wendy's so we stood in line and ordered frosties. Just as the guy said, "7.71", Benjamin peed and it exploded out his diaper. Being a mom, I caught it in my hand. Being Pee, it escaped all over the floor and down my front. The other, clean, hand was holding $25 in cash, so I told the guy to just take that so his hands would be clean. He did. And gave me $2.29 in change. I said, "I gave you $25." He said, "You gave me a ten." I said, "I didn't even HAVE a ten!" So he took the whole $25 and gave it back to me. I said, "Now I have $27 and change, and I owe you for the frosties still." He said, "You do?" "Yes. Here's your change back." Then he was totally confused, even though I had completely negated the entire financial transaction and we were back where we started. He called the manager over, who cancelled it all and started over. "Don't you know math?!" the manager said. "NO!" the cashier said. So they rang me up again. Meanwhile, the line behind me was getting longer and the frosties were melting. They put into the computer that I gave them $25 and they were going to give me $17 or so in change. I said, "I don't have to give you $25. You're just going to give me the five back." Then I looked them each in the face and said wearily, "Never mind." and handed over the $25 and they gave me $17.29 and I took the frosties and we left.
I don't know if it was on the walk there or the walk back when we had just come to a bus stop with a bench. A tall, wiry guy suddenly jumped up and turned to the bench and said, "Watch my stuff, man. Don't let anyone take my junk!" And he dashed away. By then I was up at the bench and I looked over--and there was a bunch of little junk arranged on the bench, and an empty suit coat that completely DIDN'T match what the man had been wearing, and NO PERSON on the bench. I was glad the kids missed the whole thing. I wasn't sure how I would explain that to them!
We saw a guy who was supposed to be a living statue, but he was so busy getting pictures with people that he just looked like a silver man. There was also a couple of live M&Ms and a giant-headed Elvis down there.
We got back to the theater just at the right time, and the show was just done. Gina, who works there and is an absolute angel, had some coloring toys for the kids, so they sat down and colored quietly. Gina has been a mother's lifesaver more than once. That woman deserves a raise for how well she treats guests there. And me.
We had called ahead because we were bringing at least 13 people to a pizza place. It turned out it was a little cart in a casino. Why the lady didn't mention to me that they couldn't even SEAT 13 people because there were no seats at all was a mystery to me. We ended up at the Metro Pizza on Flamingo and Decatur, and they had GREAT pizza. Unbelievably good. The stuffed pizza was my favorite. The kids loved the cheese, pepperoni, and mushroom pizzas. All together it was good and they were extremely good with the kids, and tolerant with them running around and being messy. IT was really fun. In some ways it felt like when both families of a couple get together at the odd "everyone's here and we've already met a couple times" times in your life, like baptisms. Our Toxic family was interacting with our Jones family, and it all went pleasantly, but was really kind of odd to experience and watch. Not at all awkward, thanks to everyone being friendly and relaxed. Just odd.
Inlaws liked the show. We liked seeing them.
It was kind of an insane day, though. Oh, I forgot to mention that lunch was a picnic in the park. We were really busy all day. Now I'm really really tired.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
New Favorite Treat
I happened upon this accidentally at dinner tonight, and it's really tasty: fresh ripe bartlett pear slices dipped in plain old natural sour cream.
I have dipped all manner of peach slices in vanilla sour cream (1 tsp vanilla for each cup of sour cream), and sweetened with brown sugar sour cream, but I'd never tried plain, and the fruit at dinner tonight was fresh sliced bartlett pears. Really tasted surprisingly good.
I may just be picky about my pears, but I really do find a massive difference between varieties (D'anjou just don't ripen as sweet as bartlett!), and how ripe it is (if you can't pull the stem right out without twisting, it's too green). I don't know if it would be as good with green pears, or d'anjou, or "unnatural" (ie regular) sour cream. (I'm very partial to the "natural" kind you buy at Smiths/King SOopers/Food4Less because the list of ingredients is short and sweet, with no preservatives or chemicals--not to mention it tastes better).
I have dipped all manner of peach slices in vanilla sour cream (1 tsp vanilla for each cup of sour cream), and sweetened with brown sugar sour cream, but I'd never tried plain, and the fruit at dinner tonight was fresh sliced bartlett pears. Really tasted surprisingly good.
I may just be picky about my pears, but I really do find a massive difference between varieties (D'anjou just don't ripen as sweet as bartlett!), and how ripe it is (if you can't pull the stem right out without twisting, it's too green). I don't know if it would be as good with green pears, or d'anjou, or "unnatural" (ie regular) sour cream. (I'm very partial to the "natural" kind you buy at Smiths/King SOopers/Food4Less because the list of ingredients is short and sweet, with no preservatives or chemicals--not to mention it tastes better).
Monday, March 24, 2008
Crazy Week!
"Mar 23 - $1250 / 3br - Brand New Beautifull House, Never Lived Before - (Las Vegas)"
Amazing what words you really can't leave out of an ad. Who knew that "in" made such a difference!
This has been an interesting week.
I got a rejection from an agent. It was a nice rejection, "with regrets", but said the main character isn't compelling enough. Here we go again with compelling! That's okay, I guess. Based on the comments from another semi-rejections I got, I've rewritten the whole book again. I just have to do the last hundred pages and we've got draft 62,543. Just kidding. But how many times have I said it was done? Following the suggestions from the agent, the book has now dropped below 90,000 words. Normal novel length. Go figure. It went from 214,000 words at its longest down to 87,000 (right now. I have to rewrite those last hundred pages still, so I don't know how long it will end up--under 100,000 words, though, for sure).
Daniel had developed some kind of horrid allergies that act like hay fever but come with a rash that acts like eczema. So we're up all night with itching and stuffiness.
I punctured my little finger with a fork trying to cut fudge that I made accidentally. Now that I write it, it seems completely unlikely that the situation would exist, much less that you could actually puncture a pinkie finger with TWO tines of the fork. I guess I have excellent bad aim. Oh, and it hurt. And yes, I did make fudge by accident.
I spent lots of time driving around and found a LOT of places we don't want to live. Most of Las Vegas seems to be unsafe, crowded, or master-planned. I read that Vegas and San Francisco are in similar housing trouble: unwise borrowing lead to foreclosures, which lowered the overall value of all the houses, and that lead to more foreclosures (apparently people don't like to pay for or sell houses that are worth less than the mortgage is for, so they walk away). To prevent future foreclosures, lenders stopped being so generous about who could get loans, so suddenly there were too few buyers, and that drove the overall house values down even more, exacerbating the problems. There are now many many more houses than people who can buy, so the values continue to drop and will for at least the rest of the year, despite the promises by those master-planners who insist that houses still gain 10% in value per year and are still building new houses! The result of all of this is there are some great houses on the market for cheaper than rent, but nobody can get loans to buy them so the rental market is awful. And you can't convince the owners to carry the loan or rent-to-own with you because the houses are owned by the banks, who just want to unload them--onto someone who can get a loan.
I, unfortunately, right now fall into the category of people who can't get a loan (gotta sell that old house first!), and I also can't find a suitable rental. What's a woman to do?
What with holidays, visitors coming, cleaning girl not making it twice this week, and the regular stresses of life, it's been a rather unpleasant week, despite really nice visits from my parents.
One last random thought: Why is it that the two holidays that are supposed to be Christ-centered are the ones that we celebrate by telling children they are being visited by mythical beings who give them things? Nobody really waits for the Great Pumpkin on Halloween or Thanksgiving, but we have very clearly associated Christ with magical creatures that, oh--sorry--don't really exist! And why the emphasis on stuff and wanting stuff? All of that is very anti-Christ.
Amazing what words you really can't leave out of an ad. Who knew that "in" made such a difference!
This has been an interesting week.
I got a rejection from an agent. It was a nice rejection, "with regrets", but said the main character isn't compelling enough. Here we go again with compelling! That's okay, I guess. Based on the comments from another semi-rejections I got, I've rewritten the whole book again. I just have to do the last hundred pages and we've got draft 62,543. Just kidding. But how many times have I said it was done? Following the suggestions from the agent, the book has now dropped below 90,000 words. Normal novel length. Go figure. It went from 214,000 words at its longest down to 87,000 (right now. I have to rewrite those last hundred pages still, so I don't know how long it will end up--under 100,000 words, though, for sure).
Daniel had developed some kind of horrid allergies that act like hay fever but come with a rash that acts like eczema. So we're up all night with itching and stuffiness.
I punctured my little finger with a fork trying to cut fudge that I made accidentally. Now that I write it, it seems completely unlikely that the situation would exist, much less that you could actually puncture a pinkie finger with TWO tines of the fork. I guess I have excellent bad aim. Oh, and it hurt. And yes, I did make fudge by accident.
I spent lots of time driving around and found a LOT of places we don't want to live. Most of Las Vegas seems to be unsafe, crowded, or master-planned. I read that Vegas and San Francisco are in similar housing trouble: unwise borrowing lead to foreclosures, which lowered the overall value of all the houses, and that lead to more foreclosures (apparently people don't like to pay for or sell houses that are worth less than the mortgage is for, so they walk away). To prevent future foreclosures, lenders stopped being so generous about who could get loans, so suddenly there were too few buyers, and that drove the overall house values down even more, exacerbating the problems. There are now many many more houses than people who can buy, so the values continue to drop and will for at least the rest of the year, despite the promises by those master-planners who insist that houses still gain 10% in value per year and are still building new houses! The result of all of this is there are some great houses on the market for cheaper than rent, but nobody can get loans to buy them so the rental market is awful. And you can't convince the owners to carry the loan or rent-to-own with you because the houses are owned by the banks, who just want to unload them--onto someone who can get a loan.
I, unfortunately, right now fall into the category of people who can't get a loan (gotta sell that old house first!), and I also can't find a suitable rental. What's a woman to do?
What with holidays, visitors coming, cleaning girl not making it twice this week, and the regular stresses of life, it's been a rather unpleasant week, despite really nice visits from my parents.
One last random thought: Why is it that the two holidays that are supposed to be Christ-centered are the ones that we celebrate by telling children they are being visited by mythical beings who give them things? Nobody really waits for the Great Pumpkin on Halloween or Thanksgiving, but we have very clearly associated Christ with magical creatures that, oh--sorry--don't really exist! And why the emphasis on stuff and wanting stuff? All of that is very anti-Christ.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Kids say the darndest things
Each kid said something laughable in the last 24 hours.
First, Anda was asking for a snack before bed. She said, "Can I have peanut butter and jam on my hot dog." "No," I said. "Why not?" she said. "Because that would be yucky. But you can have peanutbutter and jam on a sandwich," I said. "Oh, I meant could I have ketchup and mustard on my peanut butter sandwich!"
We eventually got it all worked out.
Then today, Caleb was on the swings at the park. He jumped off a little higher than I (or he) thought he would, so I said, 'Be careful--you can break your arm jumping off swings.' He said, 'Don't worry. The damage wasn't too severe.' The teenage girl next to him burst out laughing.
Later, Dan was in the swing at the park but it was time to go. He didn't want to leave, so I said, "Do you want more time?" "Yes," he said. "How much?" I asked. "Seven," he said. "Seven?" I said. "Yes. Three," he held up three fingers. "Three minutes?" I said. "Yes, three minutes," he said, and he looked at his fingers and added two more. Then five more, so all ten were up. "Three minutes," he repeated, holding his fingers out. All ten of them.
About fifteen seconds later, he said, "Okay! Time for a last slide!" and that was that.
The nice thing that happened at the park was I was talking to another mother, and she said, 'It's just not the same when you're in your thirties. You can chase four kids when you're in your twenties, but it's just not the same when you're in your thirties!' I didn't tell her that I AM in my thirties. I was flattered that I look younger. Until about twenty minutes later when I realized she probably thought I got pregnant when I was a teenager!
First, Anda was asking for a snack before bed. She said, "Can I have peanut butter and jam on my hot dog." "No," I said. "Why not?" she said. "Because that would be yucky. But you can have peanutbutter and jam on a sandwich," I said. "Oh, I meant could I have ketchup and mustard on my peanut butter sandwich!"
We eventually got it all worked out.
Then today, Caleb was on the swings at the park. He jumped off a little higher than I (or he) thought he would, so I said, 'Be careful--you can break your arm jumping off swings.' He said, 'Don't worry. The damage wasn't too severe.' The teenage girl next to him burst out laughing.
Later, Dan was in the swing at the park but it was time to go. He didn't want to leave, so I said, "Do you want more time?" "Yes," he said. "How much?" I asked. "Seven," he said. "Seven?" I said. "Yes. Three," he held up three fingers. "Three minutes?" I said. "Yes, three minutes," he said, and he looked at his fingers and added two more. Then five more, so all ten were up. "Three minutes," he repeated, holding his fingers out. All ten of them.
About fifteen seconds later, he said, "Okay! Time for a last slide!" and that was that.
The nice thing that happened at the park was I was talking to another mother, and she said, 'It's just not the same when you're in your thirties. You can chase four kids when you're in your twenties, but it's just not the same when you're in your thirties!' I didn't tell her that I AM in my thirties. I was flattered that I look younger. Until about twenty minutes later when I realized she probably thought I got pregnant when I was a teenager!
Monday, March 10, 2008
Mensa for Kids
I didn't know kids could join Mensa. I'm not going to pay the membership fees for any of us to be tested and possibly join, although at least when I was a kid I qualified (who knows about now!)
But you have access to their site even if you haven't joined. This is the site that I was particularly pleased with:
http://www.mensaforkids.org/
It has games, links to other cool sites, a feature of the month (on Pi this month), and a true understanding of what gifted kids are like. For example, you can click on a game link and play a word-unscrambling game, and then also color the picture on the page. That's cool. Often "advanced" stuff forgets that kids are still kids.
So this is definitely a go look. The adult mensa site also has games you can try. I am going to pass or I'll get addicted, but there are lots of word games. Very cool.
But you have access to their site even if you haven't joined. This is the site that I was particularly pleased with:
http://www.mensaforkids.org/
It has games, links to other cool sites, a feature of the month (on Pi this month), and a true understanding of what gifted kids are like. For example, you can click on a game link and play a word-unscrambling game, and then also color the picture on the page. That's cool. Often "advanced" stuff forgets that kids are still kids.
So this is definitely a go look. The adult mensa site also has games you can try. I am going to pass or I'll get addicted, but there are lots of word games. Very cool.
Friday, March 07, 2008
More recipes
The Lion House International Cookbook has a fabulous recipe for Cajun chicken, but it's a little involved (dirties 3+ pots) and includes making your own spice mixes and using ingredients I don't have on hand usually, like tarragon and pimientos. Still, my family loved it.
So I messed around some and came up with a great clone that is quick and easy--quick enough to make in the amount of time it takes to cook the rice and set the table.
Quick Cajun Chicken with Confetti Rice
2 c water
1 c rice
oil
1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts partially thawed
2 tbsp margarine
2 tbsp flour
1 1/2 tsp cajun seasoning (you can often get it at the dollar store)
1 c milk
1 c frozen peas (still frozen)
1 2-oz jar pimientos (opt)
Following the directions on the rice package, get the rice cooking.
Slice the chicken into thin strips (this is easiest done when the chicken is still partially frozen). Stir fry over high heat in a lightly oiled frying pan until it is just barely done. Turn off the heat and stir in the margarine until it's melted. Then sprinkle on the flour and cajun seasoning and stir this in, too. Turn the heat back on to medium or medium high and add the milk slowly, stirring constantly so it doesn't burn, letting it boil if necessary until the sauce thickens. This should be ready about the time the rice is cooked. The instant the rice is done, stir in the frozen peas (so they'll thaw by serving time) and pimientos and put the lid on to hasten their cooking. Serve the chicken over the rice.
Even my picky eaters love this, and I love that it's easy. It only serves 4-6, with some of those being children, so double it for a big family (or cut the chicken in smaller bits and double everything else).
So I messed around some and came up with a great clone that is quick and easy--quick enough to make in the amount of time it takes to cook the rice and set the table.
Quick Cajun Chicken with Confetti Rice
2 c water
1 c rice
oil
1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts partially thawed
2 tbsp margarine
2 tbsp flour
1 1/2 tsp cajun seasoning (you can often get it at the dollar store)
1 c milk
1 c frozen peas (still frozen)
1 2-oz jar pimientos (opt)
Following the directions on the rice package, get the rice cooking.
Slice the chicken into thin strips (this is easiest done when the chicken is still partially frozen). Stir fry over high heat in a lightly oiled frying pan until it is just barely done. Turn off the heat and stir in the margarine until it's melted. Then sprinkle on the flour and cajun seasoning and stir this in, too. Turn the heat back on to medium or medium high and add the milk slowly, stirring constantly so it doesn't burn, letting it boil if necessary until the sauce thickens. This should be ready about the time the rice is cooked. The instant the rice is done, stir in the frozen peas (so they'll thaw by serving time) and pimientos and put the lid on to hasten their cooking. Serve the chicken over the rice.
Even my picky eaters love this, and I love that it's easy. It only serves 4-6, with some of those being children, so double it for a big family (or cut the chicken in smaller bits and double everything else).
Thursday, March 06, 2008
It's a wonder I get anything written at all
I've been doing revisions suggested by that agent, and it's been the hardest thinking I've done in my life. The agent suggested I take out as many characters as I could. Unfortunately, every character actually played a role in the story, so in removing them I had to reassign those roles to other characters, and then deal with the fact that Tory would handle something differently than, say, Hansel and Gretel, and Tom would do things different that Arvense, and Prudence than Grandma, and....you get the idea. Plus, I did want the novel to hit some key, not-needing-to-be-rewritten points. But it isn't enough just to take the narrative there--I had to get the characters to the same emotional state, and in a way that is believable and legitimate.
To complicate things, this is how writing usually happens in my house:
(It's not a great picture because it was taken on a kid camera by Anda).
That was followed by this:
Note that I am interacting with three children--a sleeping baby, a toddler who is trying to poke me in the eye with sunglasses, and a four year old who is saying "Smile Mom!" Not to mention it is probably 3:00 am and I look like it. In fact, ignore how awful I look in both pictures.
Looking at these pics, I wonder how I've managed to write a novel and re-write it at least 3 times, plus do detailed outlines on at least 3 more novels. It's even more of a wonder that anything I've written makes enough sense to get the attention of agents enough to get personalized rejections with helpful comments.
Hopefully we'll get beyond the rejections part soon.
If I can just get Kate to a character who has a different name in this draft, and then to Mother Goose, and figure out (once again) why she's traveling alone (since that doesn't make sense in the new draft).
But hey, I worked it out twice so far. I can do it again. It's just the hardest problem solving I have EVER had to do. Partially because my usual MO for solving these kinds of problems is to let them ferment, but I want to get this revision done before the agent loses interest, so I am pushing it through. No time to ferment.
We'll see what happens.
To complicate things, this is how writing usually happens in my house:
(It's not a great picture because it was taken on a kid camera by Anda).
That was followed by this:
Note that I am interacting with three children--a sleeping baby, a toddler who is trying to poke me in the eye with sunglasses, and a four year old who is saying "Smile Mom!" Not to mention it is probably 3:00 am and I look like it. In fact, ignore how awful I look in both pictures.
Looking at these pics, I wonder how I've managed to write a novel and re-write it at least 3 times, plus do detailed outlines on at least 3 more novels. It's even more of a wonder that anything I've written makes enough sense to get the attention of agents enough to get personalized rejections with helpful comments.
Hopefully we'll get beyond the rejections part soon.
If I can just get Kate to a character who has a different name in this draft, and then to Mother Goose, and figure out (once again) why she's traveling alone (since that doesn't make sense in the new draft).
But hey, I worked it out twice so far. I can do it again. It's just the hardest problem solving I have EVER had to do. Partially because my usual MO for solving these kinds of problems is to let them ferment, but I want to get this revision done before the agent loses interest, so I am pushing it through. No time to ferment.
We'll see what happens.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Yahoo Group for Gift LDS Homeschooling Families
Here (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Gifted-LDS-hs/#ans) is the link to a Yahoo Group for homeschoolers with gifted LDS kids.
I don't know how good the group is, but I thought I'd pass the word along that it's there.
I don't know how good the group is, but I thought I'd pass the word along that it's there.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Comcast is Incompetent
Don't use Comcast if you can help it.
We moved and mistakenly thought we'd bought our modem four years before, so we took it with us. It was a mistake on our part.
Naturally, we got a bill saying we owed them $100 for nonreturned equipment.
I called to say, "I thought we owned our modem."
The first lady I talked to said, "You do. Just ignore the bill. We actually owe you $35. It's standard procedure. We always overbill when people disconnect."
Stupid standard procedure, but she assured me it was taken care of. So I tore up the bill and ignored it.
A month later we got another bill from them for the same reason. I called again and said, "We thought we bought our modem AND the last lady said this was taken care of." He did some research and said that we actually didn't buy our modem--our mistake, I admitted--but that two days after the bill was sent (but before we received it) the debt was discharged, so don't worry about it. It was all taken care of. Tear up the bill and they'd send us $35.
So I did.
Now today I received a bill from a collections agency for the same amount! Apparently the "discharged" was supposed to be "discharged to collections." Now, this would have been annoying because they did that before we even received the last bill. The fact that TWICE Comcasts own employees said to forget about it and tear up the bill is absolutely unforgiveable.
Absolutely.
I called the collections agency and disputed the bill (we want to buy a house in a few months. We can't have that kind of black marks on our credit right now!). Then I called Comcast and said the mormon equivalent of "wtf!!!!!!!" (if you are mormon and don't know that phrase, don't ponder it too long, just go on with Becca almost swore at them).
The lady took my payment over the phone (since I acknowledge--we DID make a mistake), but first I had to convince her that I couldn't pay through collections. The last lady I talked to was really really nice. Really nice. She submitted a complaint for me.
But this whole situation is still UNFORGIVABLE. It should never have happened. What should have happened is they should have done the research on the first call, explained we made a mistake, and let us send back the equipment. That would have solved everything to everyone's satisfaction. I wouldn't have even yelled at them.
As it is--don't use comcast if you don't have to. (How they manage to be a true monopoly in some states has always bothered me, but that's okay....). If you do have to get your cable through them, at least buy vonage for your phone.....
We moved and mistakenly thought we'd bought our modem four years before, so we took it with us. It was a mistake on our part.
Naturally, we got a bill saying we owed them $100 for nonreturned equipment.
I called to say, "I thought we owned our modem."
The first lady I talked to said, "You do. Just ignore the bill. We actually owe you $35. It's standard procedure. We always overbill when people disconnect."
Stupid standard procedure, but she assured me it was taken care of. So I tore up the bill and ignored it.
A month later we got another bill from them for the same reason. I called again and said, "We thought we bought our modem AND the last lady said this was taken care of." He did some research and said that we actually didn't buy our modem--our mistake, I admitted--but that two days after the bill was sent (but before we received it) the debt was discharged, so don't worry about it. It was all taken care of. Tear up the bill and they'd send us $35.
So I did.
Now today I received a bill from a collections agency for the same amount! Apparently the "discharged" was supposed to be "discharged to collections." Now, this would have been annoying because they did that before we even received the last bill. The fact that TWICE Comcasts own employees said to forget about it and tear up the bill is absolutely unforgiveable.
Absolutely.
I called the collections agency and disputed the bill (we want to buy a house in a few months. We can't have that kind of black marks on our credit right now!). Then I called Comcast and said the mormon equivalent of "wtf!!!!!!!" (if you are mormon and don't know that phrase, don't ponder it too long, just go on with Becca almost swore at them).
The lady took my payment over the phone (since I acknowledge--we DID make a mistake), but first I had to convince her that I couldn't pay through collections. The last lady I talked to was really really nice. Really nice. She submitted a complaint for me.
But this whole situation is still UNFORGIVABLE. It should never have happened. What should have happened is they should have done the research on the first call, explained we made a mistake, and let us send back the equipment. That would have solved everything to everyone's satisfaction. I wouldn't have even yelled at them.
As it is--don't use comcast if you don't have to. (How they manage to be a true monopoly in some states has always bothered me, but that's okay....). If you do have to get your cable through them, at least buy vonage for your phone.....
A Couple of Recipe Successes
I have a recipe that makes some of the tastiest cookies ever, but it’s one of those “contributed by ____ to our school fundraiser cookbook” recipes, so you’re not going to find it easily in any standard cookbook. As with all recipes on my blog, I have modified it, but not as extensively as others, so I still feel like this is not my own recipe. Still, I suspect it will be lost if someone doesn’t preserve it somehow. I’ve done extensive searches online that indicate that only the wording of recipes is copyrightable, not the list of ingredients (nobody owns “3 eggs” because how else can you say it?). So here, paraphrased and slightly tweaked but with full attribution, is the recipe for “Great Grandma Lefler’s Icebox Cookies,” which apparently “men love.” We all love them, and the dough is the hardest to resist ever.
The original was contributed by PJ Holtzman, who donated a good many recipes to the book. It can be found on page 65 of “Reading, Writing and Recipes: A Collection From East Antioch Elementary”, published by Cookbook Publishers, Inc. from Lenexa, KS, in 1996, for the East Antioch PTA. It is one of the better “folk” recipe collections I’ve found, although it suffers still from amateur-cookbook-itis (says too much or too little, but not ever just enough).
½ c butter or margarine
¾ c shortening
1 c light brown sugar
1 c sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla (my addition)
4 ½ c flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
Cream butter and shortening together. Add sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, and vanilla. Beat well. With the mixer stopped, add flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda, in that order (no need to sift!). Mix well. Press dough into an 8x8” pan. Cover and refrigerate at least overnight. When you are ready to use the dough, use a sharp knife to cut it into two 4x8” chunks. When you want cookies, cut off ¼ inch slices and bake them on an ungreased cookie sheet for 6-8 minutes at 400 degrees. You can also cut them into four 2” strips in you want square instead of rectangular cookies. They make good “cookie sticks” for dunking in milk.
The other neat cookbook experience we had came from “The First American Cookbook: a Facsimile of ‘American Cookery,’ 1796 by Amelia Simmons”, which Jon and Chastity gave me for Christmas.
This is the original recipe that caught my eye, quoted here in its entirety because it is in the public domain (or should be since it was first published well before 1920). You can download the entire book, minus the Dover notes and intro, here: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12815.
“A Bread Pudding. One pound soft bread or biscuit soaked in one quart milk, run thro’ a sieve or cullender, add 7 eggs, three quarters of a pound sugar, one quarter of a pound butter, nutmeg or cinnamon, one gill rosewater, one pound stoned raisins, half pint cream, bake three quarters of an hour, middling oven.”
Here is what I did:
A 22 oz of sandwich bread has about 22 slices, so I took 16 slices of white bread (I realized after the fact that Amelia Simmons wouldn’t use her white flour, if she had any, for this, but it worked well for me). I tore the slices into pieces and poured 4 cups of milk over it. I stirred it, covered it, and let it sit (at room temperature, but I should have put it in the fridge I guess—but Amelia couldn’t have, and I was trying to make her recipe) for an hour or two.
Then I worked it through a sieve. This was extremely tedious, but it eventually came out a nice light brown thick liquid. It had a unique texture that I couldn’t have achieved by blending it in the blender, or any other way I can think of, so this was a useful step. It also definitely set this apart from modern bread puddings, which I’m not very fond of.
I added the 7 eggs.
Then I had to go to the internet to find out how many cups of sugar are in a pound, and discovered there is no exact consensus, but everyone’s estimates hover around “a heaping 2 cups”. So I put in 2 level cups of sugar and assumed that was about ¾ lb. One quarter of a pound of butter is one stick, so I put in one stick of margarine, which wouldn’t blend up nicely. So I fished it out with some of the mixture and heated it in the microwave until the butter melted. I stirred this all together and put it back into the whole.
At this point I realized my bowl was too small, but I was careful and worked through the rest. I put in a dash of nutmeg and about a tsp of cinnamon, and then I skipped the rosewater. I didn’t want to deal with it! But I did stir in about a half a pound of raisins (about a cup, I guessed), and I didn’t have cream so I put in a cup of whole milk. Normally in this kind of recipe I use evaporated milk as a cream replacement, but I didn’t have that either. So milk it was.
Then I greased a 3 qt casserole (a really big one) and poured the liquid in. The raisins sank to the bottom. Oops. I should have soaked them in boiling water overnight (or at least long enough to plump them) so they would float in the batter. Stoned raisins would have been flayed, more or less, so they wouldn’t have sunk like regular seedless raisins.
I am familiar with the phrases “quick oven” (really hot, like 450-500 degrees) and “slow oven” (most of the heat has escaped and it’s closer to 250-300 degrees), so I guess a middling oven was 350 degrees.
The pudding wasn’t done after 45 minutes. It was brown, but jiggly and liquid in the middle. I have since discovered that the oven here cooks hot (a LOT hot, like 50 degrees off), so I kept cooking the thing until the middle was set like a pumpkin pie, but then the bottom (with all the raisins on it) was on the edge of burning. It took over an hour. I should have cooked it undisturbed at 350 (probably 300 on my oven) for 1 ½ hours, checking after 1 hour and then every 10-15 minutes after.
It came out incredibly tasty. Unbelievably yummy. It had the consistency and texture of pumpkin pie, but was much much tastier. It actually got eaten. By everyone in the family.
So that was a success.
And an adventure.
Cooking is fun.
The original was contributed by PJ Holtzman, who donated a good many recipes to the book. It can be found on page 65 of “Reading, Writing and Recipes: A Collection From East Antioch Elementary”, published by Cookbook Publishers, Inc. from Lenexa, KS, in 1996, for the East Antioch PTA. It is one of the better “folk” recipe collections I’ve found, although it suffers still from amateur-cookbook-itis (says too much or too little, but not ever just enough).
½ c butter or margarine
¾ c shortening
1 c light brown sugar
1 c sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla (my addition)
4 ½ c flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
Cream butter and shortening together. Add sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, and vanilla. Beat well. With the mixer stopped, add flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda, in that order (no need to sift!). Mix well. Press dough into an 8x8” pan. Cover and refrigerate at least overnight. When you are ready to use the dough, use a sharp knife to cut it into two 4x8” chunks. When you want cookies, cut off ¼ inch slices and bake them on an ungreased cookie sheet for 6-8 minutes at 400 degrees. You can also cut them into four 2” strips in you want square instead of rectangular cookies. They make good “cookie sticks” for dunking in milk.
The other neat cookbook experience we had came from “The First American Cookbook: a Facsimile of ‘American Cookery,’ 1796 by Amelia Simmons”, which Jon and Chastity gave me for Christmas.
This is the original recipe that caught my eye, quoted here in its entirety because it is in the public domain (or should be since it was first published well before 1920). You can download the entire book, minus the Dover notes and intro, here: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12815.
“A Bread Pudding. One pound soft bread or biscuit soaked in one quart milk, run thro’ a sieve or cullender, add 7 eggs, three quarters of a pound sugar, one quarter of a pound butter, nutmeg or cinnamon, one gill rosewater, one pound stoned raisins, half pint cream, bake three quarters of an hour, middling oven.”
Here is what I did:
A 22 oz of sandwich bread has about 22 slices, so I took 16 slices of white bread (I realized after the fact that Amelia Simmons wouldn’t use her white flour, if she had any, for this, but it worked well for me). I tore the slices into pieces and poured 4 cups of milk over it. I stirred it, covered it, and let it sit (at room temperature, but I should have put it in the fridge I guess—but Amelia couldn’t have, and I was trying to make her recipe) for an hour or two.
Then I worked it through a sieve. This was extremely tedious, but it eventually came out a nice light brown thick liquid. It had a unique texture that I couldn’t have achieved by blending it in the blender, or any other way I can think of, so this was a useful step. It also definitely set this apart from modern bread puddings, which I’m not very fond of.
I added the 7 eggs.
Then I had to go to the internet to find out how many cups of sugar are in a pound, and discovered there is no exact consensus, but everyone’s estimates hover around “a heaping 2 cups”. So I put in 2 level cups of sugar and assumed that was about ¾ lb. One quarter of a pound of butter is one stick, so I put in one stick of margarine, which wouldn’t blend up nicely. So I fished it out with some of the mixture and heated it in the microwave until the butter melted. I stirred this all together and put it back into the whole.
At this point I realized my bowl was too small, but I was careful and worked through the rest. I put in a dash of nutmeg and about a tsp of cinnamon, and then I skipped the rosewater. I didn’t want to deal with it! But I did stir in about a half a pound of raisins (about a cup, I guessed), and I didn’t have cream so I put in a cup of whole milk. Normally in this kind of recipe I use evaporated milk as a cream replacement, but I didn’t have that either. So milk it was.
Then I greased a 3 qt casserole (a really big one) and poured the liquid in. The raisins sank to the bottom. Oops. I should have soaked them in boiling water overnight (or at least long enough to plump them) so they would float in the batter. Stoned raisins would have been flayed, more or less, so they wouldn’t have sunk like regular seedless raisins.
I am familiar with the phrases “quick oven” (really hot, like 450-500 degrees) and “slow oven” (most of the heat has escaped and it’s closer to 250-300 degrees), so I guess a middling oven was 350 degrees.
The pudding wasn’t done after 45 minutes. It was brown, but jiggly and liquid in the middle. I have since discovered that the oven here cooks hot (a LOT hot, like 50 degrees off), so I kept cooking the thing until the middle was set like a pumpkin pie, but then the bottom (with all the raisins on it) was on the edge of burning. It took over an hour. I should have cooked it undisturbed at 350 (probably 300 on my oven) for 1 ½ hours, checking after 1 hour and then every 10-15 minutes after.
It came out incredibly tasty. Unbelievably yummy. It had the consistency and texture of pumpkin pie, but was much much tastier. It actually got eaten. By everyone in the family.
So that was a success.
And an adventure.
Cooking is fun.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
House Hunting in Vegas
Nobody here has ever heard of the neighborhood we want to move into, even though it was built in the 1960s.
I find that bizarre. It is so "unheard of" that they didn't even put it on the maps in the phone book. Some of the streets aren't paved yet. And it's only a couple of miles from the strip! Far closer than we are now.
This had me puzzled for a long time, until I realized that the neighborhood and ward we live in value conformity as an end in itself.
This is a foreign concept to me. Completely. In Colorado, a singer/composer being married to a writer was seen as odd, but "how nice that they are living their dreams". Here people treat us like we're from another planet! The only thing that saves the situation ever is that Tim works for a prestigious producer in an established theater on the Strip.
The conflict seems to stem from the conformity issue. People here value it. We've always seen it as sometimes necessary, but never to be done willy-nilly. I realize that conformity is necessary for society to function, and for people to have a sense of whether or not they are mentally healthy. There certainly is value in being "normal" (and I have cried for not being "normal" many times). On the other hand, the world can't be happy filled with accountants and salesmen (seem to be standard kinds of jobs here, much the same way being a computer programmer was the norm in Colorado). Who would write the music? Who would dance the dances and tell the stories and paint the pictures and create the movies?
People here LOVE master-planned communities. We have always considered them foul. Now we live in one, and it is very difficult to want to come home at night. I actually feel more comfortable back stage and in the back hallways of the theaters than in my own neighborhood!
One of the things that bugs me about the community is that it is a tangible expression of the value people place in appearance over quality. The ladies who have come over thought my "brick" kitchen was great. It bothers me, even though I've always been charmed by brick kitchens, because in this house it is actually still cheap drywall with 1/4 inch slices of brick glued on. And in a pattern that, if it were real brick, would be structurally unsound in places. Part of the charm of a brick kitchen is the sheen and variation 100-year-old bricks get from the oils that are used in the kitchen. Antiques and country home enthusiasts capitalize on this by shellacking the bricks so they take on that red brick glow. These "bricks" aren't even the right color of red, and, to give the wall "variation" that is inherent in old bricks, they put white marks in some of them, which in real bricks would make them prone to crumbling. Or come from scuff marks from years of use (and therefore never show up near the ceiling). The fact that the master bathroom is larger than the kitchen is very tangible evidence of the value people place on appearance here.
I had no idea that low quality really bugs me. But it does.
Another thing that bugs me (and this shows my Boulder-ness) is the lack of energy efficiency in these homes. As I see it, this it the situation: People think new is better than good. Hands down. Every time. In fact, new is better than old all together forever and ever. So the builders figured this out and they want to make money. So they take one acre and carve it into MORE THAN TEN lots (serious). But most people can't live in 600 square feet of space, so they build two stories. With a tiny lot and tiny floors in the house that are an arm's length from the next house, they have to do something to hide the fact that people are buying into a stand-alone condo, so they build the two-story homes as tall as 3-story homes and give the floors high ceilings to give the illusion that you are living in a lot of space. It's volume, though, not useful space. And volume is NOT ENERGY EFFICIENT. Vegas is an extreme climate zone. You actually physically can't live here without using energy to make it livable. Not comfortable. I'm talking purely physically survivable. So people have two air conditioners and two furnaces in their homes. The homes, to fill the need to appear wealthy, have huge windows (energy....energy....there it goes!). They have steeply pitched roofs with colors chosen for cosmetic appeal rather than efficiency. They are so close to each other they reflect heat and hold it between them, never releasing it to the cool night sky like deserts are wont to do. The walls are thin (cheaper!). And with all these houses crammed close together in a city of millions, I have seen ONE house with solar panels on the roof.
ONE.
They should ALL have solar panels. Who are we kidding? A dozen or so have black piping on the roofs, which I assume is solar-heated water. That's good. They ALL should have that. In fact, the entire empty desert land surrounding the city should be frosted with solar panels. There's enough sunlight here to power the city and then sell to neighboring states.
But it doesn't matter to people here because those things (along with the foot-thick adobe walls people used to have in the desert for a reason) are ugly, so they just use more non-renewable energy.
They don't even plant trees (in the name of conservation of water, I think). There are desert trees that do well here. I'll stop short of saying "native" but there are desert evergreens, and mesquite, and all kinds of desert trees, actually, that they put into the cactus garden in the city, but not in their front yards. These houses should be completely surrounded by shade producers, preferably deciduous ones (like mesquite trees) so that they get the natural heat in the winter, when it does get cold enough to be noticeable (35-45 degrees some days), but not in the summer when it could be deadly.
I'm not even sure the houses have those argon-filled sun-proof double paned windows. They should. Or huge overhanging roofs or some other form of built-in sun shades to keep direct sunlight out of the windows and off the walls.
They don't even have ceiling fans in all the rooms. How hard is that? (Pretty hard, I guess, since they didn't bother to put overhead lights in all the rooms. Whoever puts lamps in a kids' bedroom?!) There certainly is an abundance of light switches (and they are inconsistent. It's driving me crazy that the bathroom light is sometimes on the right of the fan switch and sometimes on the left, depending on the bathroom, so I always get the wrong one!)
It's driving me crazy.
So when we try to express to people that we are looking to move--soon--they are baffled. How on earth could we want to leave the most prestigious neighborhood in the city (second to summerlin) to live in Enterprise (and where is that anyway?). They just can't comprehend that prestige doesn't matter a spit to me, at least when it comes to housing. (I wouldn't mind having a prestigious performing award for Tim, or writing award for me, but that's not for bragging rights. That's because those kinds of awards guarantee future employment, and that IS important). What matters to me is that my neighbors aren't watching me.
And that my kids have space to play (and not the "huge" 6000 square foot lots they have here--I want closer to 10,000 square feet! Or even 40,000--that's an acre). I thought grass mattered, but I discovered here that the kids don't want to play on the grass. They want to dig it up. A big dirt lot would be perfect for them--it's one giant sandbox/off-road bike trail/construction zone/ mudhole/ creative space to them. The kids won't play outside here because there is nothing to do on all that beautiful grass that mom won't let them water soggy and dance on. There is a reason, I see now, that kids always went to the vacant lot next door to play.
What we've discovered is that houses built before central air got to be all the rage (say, the 1960s and 70s houses) _are_ built better. Higher quality. Not so cookie cutter. And with comfort and efficiency in mind. They have bigger lots (up to almost an acre in some areas of Enterprise) so the houses aren't sharing each other's heat. They are one story buildings, which are far more suited to the area (no basements, either, because the ground is so hard the rain just pools--and floods basements). The roofs are pitched (to avoid that flat-roof suncatcher problem we had in Longmont), but just barely. That way there's enough attic to catch the worst of the summer sun, but not enough to hold it forever. There are large overhangs on the roofs in front (forming walkways with arches) and in back (forming large patio areas). The large lots are not desert landscaped (which is not natural, just not water-consuming). They are NATURAL--that means just plain old dirt, thank-you very much. The houses are white or cream colored, with light-colored roofing. There are mature trees around the houses.
And, call me crazy, I want one of those.
I find that bizarre. It is so "unheard of" that they didn't even put it on the maps in the phone book. Some of the streets aren't paved yet. And it's only a couple of miles from the strip! Far closer than we are now.
This had me puzzled for a long time, until I realized that the neighborhood and ward we live in value conformity as an end in itself.
This is a foreign concept to me. Completely. In Colorado, a singer/composer being married to a writer was seen as odd, but "how nice that they are living their dreams". Here people treat us like we're from another planet! The only thing that saves the situation ever is that Tim works for a prestigious producer in an established theater on the Strip.
The conflict seems to stem from the conformity issue. People here value it. We've always seen it as sometimes necessary, but never to be done willy-nilly. I realize that conformity is necessary for society to function, and for people to have a sense of whether or not they are mentally healthy. There certainly is value in being "normal" (and I have cried for not being "normal" many times). On the other hand, the world can't be happy filled with accountants and salesmen (seem to be standard kinds of jobs here, much the same way being a computer programmer was the norm in Colorado). Who would write the music? Who would dance the dances and tell the stories and paint the pictures and create the movies?
People here LOVE master-planned communities. We have always considered them foul. Now we live in one, and it is very difficult to want to come home at night. I actually feel more comfortable back stage and in the back hallways of the theaters than in my own neighborhood!
One of the things that bugs me about the community is that it is a tangible expression of the value people place in appearance over quality. The ladies who have come over thought my "brick" kitchen was great. It bothers me, even though I've always been charmed by brick kitchens, because in this house it is actually still cheap drywall with 1/4 inch slices of brick glued on. And in a pattern that, if it were real brick, would be structurally unsound in places. Part of the charm of a brick kitchen is the sheen and variation 100-year-old bricks get from the oils that are used in the kitchen. Antiques and country home enthusiasts capitalize on this by shellacking the bricks so they take on that red brick glow. These "bricks" aren't even the right color of red, and, to give the wall "variation" that is inherent in old bricks, they put white marks in some of them, which in real bricks would make them prone to crumbling. Or come from scuff marks from years of use (and therefore never show up near the ceiling). The fact that the master bathroom is larger than the kitchen is very tangible evidence of the value people place on appearance here.
I had no idea that low quality really bugs me. But it does.
Another thing that bugs me (and this shows my Boulder-ness) is the lack of energy efficiency in these homes. As I see it, this it the situation: People think new is better than good. Hands down. Every time. In fact, new is better than old all together forever and ever. So the builders figured this out and they want to make money. So they take one acre and carve it into MORE THAN TEN lots (serious). But most people can't live in 600 square feet of space, so they build two stories. With a tiny lot and tiny floors in the house that are an arm's length from the next house, they have to do something to hide the fact that people are buying into a stand-alone condo, so they build the two-story homes as tall as 3-story homes and give the floors high ceilings to give the illusion that you are living in a lot of space. It's volume, though, not useful space. And volume is NOT ENERGY EFFICIENT. Vegas is an extreme climate zone. You actually physically can't live here without using energy to make it livable. Not comfortable. I'm talking purely physically survivable. So people have two air conditioners and two furnaces in their homes. The homes, to fill the need to appear wealthy, have huge windows (energy....energy....there it goes!). They have steeply pitched roofs with colors chosen for cosmetic appeal rather than efficiency. They are so close to each other they reflect heat and hold it between them, never releasing it to the cool night sky like deserts are wont to do. The walls are thin (cheaper!). And with all these houses crammed close together in a city of millions, I have seen ONE house with solar panels on the roof.
ONE.
They should ALL have solar panels. Who are we kidding? A dozen or so have black piping on the roofs, which I assume is solar-heated water. That's good. They ALL should have that. In fact, the entire empty desert land surrounding the city should be frosted with solar panels. There's enough sunlight here to power the city and then sell to neighboring states.
But it doesn't matter to people here because those things (along with the foot-thick adobe walls people used to have in the desert for a reason) are ugly, so they just use more non-renewable energy.
They don't even plant trees (in the name of conservation of water, I think). There are desert trees that do well here. I'll stop short of saying "native" but there are desert evergreens, and mesquite, and all kinds of desert trees, actually, that they put into the cactus garden in the city, but not in their front yards. These houses should be completely surrounded by shade producers, preferably deciduous ones (like mesquite trees) so that they get the natural heat in the winter, when it does get cold enough to be noticeable (35-45 degrees some days), but not in the summer when it could be deadly.
I'm not even sure the houses have those argon-filled sun-proof double paned windows. They should. Or huge overhanging roofs or some other form of built-in sun shades to keep direct sunlight out of the windows and off the walls.
They don't even have ceiling fans in all the rooms. How hard is that? (Pretty hard, I guess, since they didn't bother to put overhead lights in all the rooms. Whoever puts lamps in a kids' bedroom?!) There certainly is an abundance of light switches (and they are inconsistent. It's driving me crazy that the bathroom light is sometimes on the right of the fan switch and sometimes on the left, depending on the bathroom, so I always get the wrong one!)
It's driving me crazy.
So when we try to express to people that we are looking to move--soon--they are baffled. How on earth could we want to leave the most prestigious neighborhood in the city (second to summerlin) to live in Enterprise (and where is that anyway?). They just can't comprehend that prestige doesn't matter a spit to me, at least when it comes to housing. (I wouldn't mind having a prestigious performing award for Tim, or writing award for me, but that's not for bragging rights. That's because those kinds of awards guarantee future employment, and that IS important). What matters to me is that my neighbors aren't watching me.
And that my kids have space to play (and not the "huge" 6000 square foot lots they have here--I want closer to 10,000 square feet! Or even 40,000--that's an acre). I thought grass mattered, but I discovered here that the kids don't want to play on the grass. They want to dig it up. A big dirt lot would be perfect for them--it's one giant sandbox/off-road bike trail/construction zone/ mudhole/ creative space to them. The kids won't play outside here because there is nothing to do on all that beautiful grass that mom won't let them water soggy and dance on. There is a reason, I see now, that kids always went to the vacant lot next door to play.
What we've discovered is that houses built before central air got to be all the rage (say, the 1960s and 70s houses) _are_ built better. Higher quality. Not so cookie cutter. And with comfort and efficiency in mind. They have bigger lots (up to almost an acre in some areas of Enterprise) so the houses aren't sharing each other's heat. They are one story buildings, which are far more suited to the area (no basements, either, because the ground is so hard the rain just pools--and floods basements). The roofs are pitched (to avoid that flat-roof suncatcher problem we had in Longmont), but just barely. That way there's enough attic to catch the worst of the summer sun, but not enough to hold it forever. There are large overhangs on the roofs in front (forming walkways with arches) and in back (forming large patio areas). The large lots are not desert landscaped (which is not natural, just not water-consuming). They are NATURAL--that means just plain old dirt, thank-you very much. The houses are white or cream colored, with light-colored roofing. There are mature trees around the houses.
And, call me crazy, I want one of those.
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