laurenisms

I have always wanted a sort of a- or semi-synchronous distributed book club online — like say a website where whenever I happen to be reading a particular work, I can go talk with other folks who are also reading it and maybe check out what others were saying about it when they were reading it too. Maybe it’s organized by chapter or other relevant unit to avoid spoilers. And people who have very most favorite works might hang out and talk about them even when they are done reading them. I read a lot, and I want to talk about it a lot; sometimes G. and I are reading the same thing but more often than not I hand it off to him when I’m done, and by the time he’s done I’m obsessed with something else. So it would be awesome to have some social networking site for this purpose.
But if this site exists I haven’t found it yet. When I heard about Infinite Summer I was intrigued but on the fence. Then Phoebe said she’s doing it, so I figured what the hell. My copy just got in today so I’m starting out behind already, but I have enough commute time that I figure I will be able to catch up and stay caught up. I hope.

Anyone else?

Up way too late last night — I blame lunchtime coffee — I had PBS on to keep me company, and they aired a short clip of former Poet Laureate Billy Collins reading to an audience. I have never heard his poems before — I know, I am a big illiterate dummy — and this poem made me both laugh and cry. I looked it up and found it in this old NPR story.

“The Lanyard”

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the pale blue walls of this room,
bouncing from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past –
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sickroom,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift–not the archaic truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Yesterday I wore sandals to walk to town to meet Bill for lunch. And today I wore a skirt! AND sandals! to work in the yard and have dinner with library school friend Genevieve. Skirt + sandals = spring! Welcome back; I missed you.

We were recently given a copy of a wonderful book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, and since I made the first batch of dough, the dough bucket has not been empty — as soon as I finish one batch I am instantly making another in without even washing it, scraping the remnants of the last dough down into the new dough so it has a head start on getting a delicious yeasty sourdough-ish flavor. So far I have made several baguettes for breakfasts and dinners, and today a loaf of crusty sandwich bread, which turned out pretty well. I’m a huge evangelist for this book now. Thank you Trent & Melinda! Everyone else, check this book out from the library (then buy it).

Also we tested out a recipe tonight that we will be making for our new parent friends this weekend: chicken, leek and apple soup, with apple juice (we used applesauce since we have that) and apple cider vinegar as well as chunks of apple. It was VERY tasty. I think I need to start putting a dollop of vinegar in soups and other things.

And then, while watching streaming Iron Chef America (scroll down for goodness), I was overwhelmed with the need to bake brownies. I had to search around a bit to find a recipe for brownies from scratch that had only 2 eggs, since that’s all I could spare, but soon enough I found this 101cookbooks forum post with the following recipe at my preferred level of recipe specificity:

The recipe:

Melt 1 stick of butter - add 1/2 c cocoa, 1 cup sugar and mix. Add 2 egss 1 at a time- mix - add vanilla and walnuts if you like. Add 1/2 cup of flour and stir to combine. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 25 minutes. Batter fits in a 8″ square pan.
ENJOY!

I added lots of chocolate chips and also some chopped up 57% chocolate bar that I found in the cupboard. Very successful thick, rich, fudgy brownies. Nom.

Kureyon stripe!, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

I am totally obsessed with this scarf and so I picked up some Noro Kureyon today. It calls for Silk Garden but it was enough cheaper for the Kureyon that I couldn’t justify the Silk Garden. I hope it’s not too scratchy. I have never been able to justify Noro of any sort before, but this is only 4 skeins and I had a gift certificate, and the scarf is so beautiful …

Colorways 172 (the dark one) and 214 (the brighter one).

Spatchcocked barbecued chicken, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

I learned how to spatchcock (hee!) (also known as butterfly) a chicken!

And I got some honey barbecue sauce from my internet secret santa, which was super exciting and also wonderfully delicious on my spatchcocked (hee) chicken.

The internets on the ferry (boaternets, as I often call them) have been difficult lately. The ferry system appears to have switched service providers, which is fine as I wasn’t that attached to the one they had, but is also frustrating, as I had already pre-paid for the month with the OLD vendor (who now has my December’s worth of money) and had to re-pay for the month with the new vendor (who also has a December’s worth, now). So, I have to sort that out, because $15 isn’t nothin’, anymore. In fact, it’s, like, two bottles of wine.

I didn’t get the account and software situation sorted out until this evening, though, so I lost yesterday morning and evening, plus this morning, that I was planning to get some stuff done online — that makes ~2.25 hours of internet time that I could have been billing, or at least cleaning out my inbox. Oh well, it is what it is.

We have finally started watching Heroes on Netflix. Anyone else think Nathan Petrelli looks like Mayor Hundred from Ex Machina?

So anyway, the vendor that my health insurance uses for fulfilling prescriptions by mail is being blackmailed. UW emailed us all about it today, and it was the first I’d heard. It’s very strange.

We had a lot of folks coming and going for Thanksgiving, including a few people who I hadn’t seen in a really long time, so that was awesome. No matter how happy we are to see folks, it gets tiring for us introverts, though, and so since then we have been very homebody-ish, staying home and eating in, etc. I have been home on a late boat* every night this week, which is also tiring. Fortunately G. has been home mostly to make me delicious dinners, like last night’s soup which was entirely from our garden except the turkey that made the stock, and the onion; they were both from local(ish) farmers.

Tomorrow I am going to play Yuppie Girl In The City, going to Urban Craft Uprising in the morning and then to get my hairs cut at the fancy place, and then G. and I are having dinner at our favorite restaurant, for no reason other than that we love it there. And that my stepdad sent us an Xmas check, for which I am so grateful!
Then I will come home from playing Yuppie Girl, and I will rake some leaves and muck the chicken coop and drive down to Kelso to pick up some windows from my mom, which we will use to make cold frames next winter.

* Later than my usual, which is 5:30, which gets me home at ~6:30.

Fisty’s Bog on World of Goo (Day 30), originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

I (and my houseguests) struggled with the Fisty’s Bog level of World of Goo a lot over the past couple of days, but I finally got it today. One thing that really helped me was building up as my first move, instead of out, as well as learning that I could put the balloons on any goo ball, not just ones on the top.

My TV isn’t quite wide enough to show both ends, but on the left, the frog is just barely cut off, and on the right, the pipe is close enough to the last point of the last triangle that it was able to get all the goo balls.

So my sister is posting a happy thing every day this month, and I thought it might be fun if we traded happy for photo for one day. So we did! Although she posted a picture of a thing that makes her happy, I will not be posting a happy thing that’s represented by a photo, just a happy thing in general.

DAY TWENTY-NINE: this weekend. I had four days off and had people and dogs coming and going, and lots of delicious food, and fun hanging out, and a walk through the market, and time to sleep in and cook and knit and read books and play video games, and a trip to the library, and lots of relaxy time. Yay, this weekend!

I am totally running out of steam BUT tomorrow is the last day!