cerebralpaladin

Is it wrong that I swiped a userpic from elvinborn just so that I could put it on this post asking the semi-rhetorical question of whether I should take it upon myself to find us a Welsh-English English-Welsh dictionary for the reference collection that is NEWER THAN 1968?

Not that it isn't a very nice dictionary, but.

Come on, the fangirls on my campus would thank me, right?

So, two days ago, Barack Obama prayed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. As is the custom, he placed his written paper in a crack in the wall.

A yeshiva student stole the prayer and sold it to an Israeli paper, which published it yesterday.

I'm not going to link to the text, because I'm pretty darn offended that this happened - although there wasn't anything objectionable in the prayer itself.

I know politicians are aware that they give up their privacy when they run for office.

But giving up the right to private prayers to God??? You might as well film him in his bedroom having sex with his wife.

If I were that student's teacher, well....there would be an enormous amount of reading in his future.

"“I just want to know how it is to play a super-hot vampire?” asked one young woman of Robert Pattinson, star of "Twilight" and alum of the Harry Potter series.

“I don’t know if I am playing,” Mr. Pattinson said.

***
I miss it, I do. Have fun for me, retsuko and yebisu9 and ashearstone!

Happy birthday to two brilliant but faraway people - owlfish and havenstone! May you have wonderful days!

As for me, I will attempt to figure out what exactly one does on the Cape when it rains. Blaaaaah, rain.

WHY WASN'T I INFORMED ABOUT THE 25th ANNIVERSARY SCREENINGS?

Geeks of the world: You have failed me. Maybe I should be reading LJ more frequently. But, seriously? Nothing on the 'schwa, and a bunch of post-mortems here?

We are not amused.

Things look pretty good after the interview I had today, though I will still say very little because stuff could still happen.

I will say this much: the job opening was originally posted at a grade lower than mine.  It has since been reposted at my level.  I think that's the first time that I've actually been able to put that particular theory into practice.

New on coreopsismajormusic tonight: I murder the Croatian language. Repeatedly.

(Yes, that's an oxymoron. Hush.)

Ordered two different Where's George stamps.

Compiled a file with the 3 different versions of my job description, and wrote comments on all of the versions noting how I want to go about merging them. (Anybody wanna see, once we've done the merge?)

Priced a new hard drive to get soon (but the power adapter will have to come first, because the point where the fray is covered with electrical tape gets hotter, and looser, and hotter and looser....)

Spent over an hour looking at real estate ads on the internet while discussing them with my sister Sparky, and falling in love with 601 Northampton Street and 25 Magnolia Avenue in particular. The former is a dumpy little cottage with a view of the river, and the latter is an adorably folksy Victorian 2 blocks away from where I live, in the middle of the part of town I most want to live in.

Also called Sparky's design advice in on this little adventure in designing an Etsy banner. I think the font is wrong and it doesn't show up well enough against the background, but I gave her the PSD files of various stages in the design of that banner, and invited her to play with it some time when she feels like it and send me improvements.

Days like this are days when I love being a grownup.

This soup has a light, savory-almost-sweet flavor because of the roasted onion and fennel, but none of the heavy sweetness of winter-squash soup. You will need a blender.

Serves 2-4 depending on how big of a squash/onion/fennel you decide to use.

Ingredients:
2 medium/large summer squashes (such as globe squash, patty-pan squash, scallopini, etc.)
chicken stock, about 1-2 c
fresh fennel bulb (medium)
small onion
3-4 cloves garlic
salt & pepper
olive oil
cumin seeds

Set your oven to at least 400 degrees.

Peel squash and chop it into 1-inch pieces. Chop the onion and fennel likewise; include fennel stalks, but reserve the feathery bits.
Place your veg in a big bowl. Add about 1/4 tsp salt (coarse grain better), plenty of black pepper, about 1/4-1/2 tsp cumin seeds, and about 1/2 c olive oil (just enough to get everything coated; it's better not to use extra virgin b/c of the high heat).
Mix it around with your hands until all the veg is coated with oil & spices, then spread it out in a single layer on a baking sheet, one that has some kind of lip so that the oil won't leak and make your oven smoky.

Roast about 20 min.s until the onion and fennel are good and soft and the squash is starting to brown on at least one side.

Put all the veg in a blender; blend it, adding stock until it has the right consistency, not too much. Chop up a small handful of the feathery bits of fennel and blend them in. Add salt, extra virgin olive oil to taste.

Mince the garlic and brown it in olive oil. Use it to top the soup bowls, or mix it in (it won't be crispy, but you'll still get the flavor.)

So far, I think this is my greatest "what random stuff did I get in a produce box this week?" invention. Yum!

sunburn. owie owie owie. On my KNEES.

It's cloudy today, I thought! I don't need that much sunscreen!

owie owie owie. aloe.

It was a lovely day of sitting around, and I finished two books and had an awesome swanky dinner out. But still. Aloe. Owie.

Flickr is such an enabler, with their searching by CC license option.

And now, because I'm not really supposed to upload someone else's work to SF0, but this CC photo allows for derivative works so off to the wacky filters I go! Many thanks to Kabils on Flicker for the original.

The wife and I are finally back home. Mostly, anyway. I'm pretty sure that my brain is still somewhere over the Pacific, but I expect it will catch up with us sometime soon.

The trip was a lot of fun, even if there was a trifle more being sick involved than I would have liked. Now we're back, and the piled up work we left behind is banging, banging, banging on the door.

The travelogue is written, but needs it some editing. We'll be e-mailing it out to those who want as it gets done.

More to come, never fear.

In response to my post on jerk chicken, I got LJ comment spam advertising a site which sends e-greetings to jerks.

You keep using that word. I do not think I mean what you think I mean.

Their automated comment bot? Not so much with the nuance.

The blogger Echidne of the Snakes had a post (related to the Bechdel test) yesterday that struck a chord with me:

"There's even a connection to that Sudden Muteness Syndrome so many women have experienced: You make a suggestion at a meeting and it drops like a rock into a pool of murky water. Then some guy makes the same suggestion and suddenly it is discussed, debated and so on. And you leave the meeting wondering why you suddenly seem to have turned into a mute and digging deep inside yourself for all sorts of self-blaming explanations. Until you learn that the Sudden Muteness Syndrome is really common among women who attend meetings, and that it should really be renamed The Sudden Male Deafness Syndrome."

What I find particularly telling about this syndrome is that so often it happens in groups where I would be willing to swear that the men involved are a. not consciously sexist in any way and b. respect my intelligence and that of the other women present.

But I see this all the time - in classes, in D&D games, in meetings, and in casual conversations over dinner. It seems to happen most frequently in groups of at least six people where there are no more than two women (perhaps because of the "three women" rule), although I don't have more than anecdotal statistics there.

It's also self-perpetuating. You make one suggestion, and it gets ignored until a guy makes it, and so the next time you have a bright idea, you stay quiet, or mention it first to the guy sitting next to you so that he can be your champion to the group, or offer up your thought surrounded by hedging words like "Maybe we could" or "What if we tried" rather than "You should" or "We will."

The worst part is, I don't know how to cure Sudden Male Deafness Syndrome. I'm pretty sure that the guys I know who are victims of it don't do it consciously at all, but no one reacts well to being told they're rude and inconsiderate (much less sexist). Women serving as each other's champions - "hey, did you hear what Jane just said? I think that's a great idea!" - helps, but gets annoying fast, especially if Jane's ideas aren't always great. I try and train people out of this habit in my classrooms, but I don't know how successful I am.

Any suggestions? Don't believe it exists? Think I'm just unassertive and whining?

http://www.folded.com/bray/?p=1099

Wellington Grey puts the ever-growing terrorist list in perspective.

That's right, folks! Apparently there has been an outbreak of radioactive granite countertops.  I have to say that I mostly find this funny, because, duh! you should probably check that the things you buy for your home are not radioactive.  But also, I am shocked that with all the crappy overbearing regulations in this country no one has put through a law to ban the stuff.  After all, laws to ban cheap imports of stuff for lower-class rich people is one of our favorite hobbies.  OK, sorry, feeling a bit snarky today.  

Had a root canal yesterday.  Went just fine.  The process was long, but painless and the dentist does a very nice bit of work.  The most painful part was the music.  My regular dentist is a big music buff, and always has Ella Fitzgerald or Dina Washington or some other jazz great playing.

This guy had the oldies station on. And not the "we play classic rock" station.  The "we play lame-ass stuff from the 70s" station on.  Neil Sedaka.  Diana Ross (sans Supremes).  Kool and the Gang.  And he hummed along to the most eggregious of the tunes, indicating he was really groovin' on them.

Still, I can chew and consume hot and cold things on both sides of my mouth for the first time in 2 years, so it's worth an hour of "Crystal Blue Persuasion".  And just in time for Smokin' Meat 2008.  Absence of pain is good.  And now Dana, Pantsie and I can have our "oral surgery dinner" and eat celebratory soft foods!

Today's moment of family cooking zen:

N: We don't have a rolling pin—what should we use instead?
B: How about an empty wine bottle?
N: Oh, yeah! Think we have any of those?

<grin>

(Yeah, we made Sangria today. We made Sangria for ... well, it probably won't last out the weekend, but it should get Saturday, at least.)

Jewel Van Valin, a Delta flight attendant, gives crayons and paper to all her flyers, saves all the art, and posts it on the bulkhead so everyone can see them as they're leaving the plane and then puts up especially good pieces in the employees' lounge.

The world needs more cool acts of productive creativity. I hope someday I get to ride on her plane.

I know this is something of a lost cause (so to speak!), but I wanted to put it out there just in case...

I haven't been able to find my iPod for several weeks at this point. I'm hoping that maybe, just maybe, I brought it into an SCA event with me and then left it there, or had it fall out of a bag/basket. Does anyone know of a found iPod or an autocrat who might have been reluctant to advertise such a thing? It's a second-generation in a black leather case, and of course I'd be happy to provide the playlist information to verify ownership!

I turned the whole house upside-down -- nothing. Bad enough I don't have all of the sprout's favorite tunes available now, but if I don't somehow get my beloved Jongleur back, the Pennsic drive is going to be a total nightmare. :(