Some of you will remember that when Kingsley went missing Cooper started doing this adorable thing where he punched me in the face when he was hungry. At 5 o’clock in the morning. Well, he still occasionally does that when I do something silly like fall asleep before feeding him his midnight snack.
So, this morning, I just assumed that since he was purring and batting me in the face that he must be hungry and so I chose to ignore him. (Actually, I told him that we weren’t eating until the alarm went off, but since my cats don’t speak English that detail is both silly and irrelevant.)
When the alarm went off and I finally did get up he ran into the room, watched me go about my morning business and then led me into the kitchen. ” I know, I know,” I said to him, “You’re hungry.” Only instead of stopping by his food bowl and waiting patiently he kept on walking and sat on my yoga mat in the front room. I stared at him for minute, put food into his bowl (Lily, my other cat, actually was hungry) and then went to join him on the floor.
I’ve been doing yoga in the mornings and apparently Cooper has decided that this is new special Kate and Cooper time. Isn’t that adorable? So, now I have to wonder, is he hitting me in the face because he’s hungry or because he wants to weave through my legs while I’m in downward-facing dog?
So, I feel like I’ve been holding out on the blogging world (and my seven loyal readers.) I have been busy this summer. I have been cooking (so, of course, I have recipes I’d like to post) and canning (I made sweet pickles out of squash!) and reading (I’m almost caught up on Cassandra “Still Not King” Clare’s ‘Mortal Instruments’ series, I’ve read the two books by Maggie Stiefvater that don’t involve wolves and, to my knowledge aren’t part of a trilogy, I’ve written some bad poetry (in perfect iambic pentameter) thanks to Stephen Fry, I’ve made not-so-shockingly little headway on this year’s book list but I have sort of become addicted to Sara Shepard’s Pretty Little Liars. The books, not the TV show the books are based on.) and I’ve been learning German (ich lerne Deutsch! Ich habe eine Schwester. Ich schenke ihr das Buch! Assuming that is how you spell all of those words and they are in the right order, all of those sentences are true. Although, a little hard to process probably since ‘das Buch’ is definite and without antecedent.) I’ve been bored to tears reading about LeBron and Favre (both of whom take way too long to make decisions. Can you imagine sitting in a restaurant with either of those guys? Do mains have to come out and court them? Do pigs have to point out where the juiciest chop will be? I know, I could just stop getting tweets from Sports Center and PTI, but sometimes they actually talk about Sports!) I’ve been working my way through all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It is amazing how little sleep one actually needs when one needs to know if Willow can be talked down from the dark side. Oh, and I’ve been working on academic stuff. Academic stuff that’s not in German.
All of this is preamble to the following sentence: I have vacation coming up. Time I have dedicated to specifically not working on preserving tasty and cheap food for the winter and ongoing academic projects and the like. So, I plan on spending some of that time posting about the food and the pickles and reviewing the books. I plan on spending some of that time working on this year’s photo project ( I may even put up a page for it!) Oh, and I plan on holding babies and going to bridal showers and just generally enjoying the part of my life that isn’t geared towards one day getting me a job (or making sure I don’t starve, get rickets or some other disease brought about by some kind of nutritional deficit.) I may blog about that, too. It is fun and exciting (and a little bit sad, noting the inexorable march of time) to see how big the Smalls in your life have gotten in the 6 months since you’ve seen them last.
So, I am holding out a little, but it won’t be for long.
The time of year when things are starting to mature in farms and gardens and I find myself (like many other CSA share-having people) hip deep in more veg than any one human being could eat. This is okay because since I have moved to Buffalo I have slowly been building up an arsenal of canning skills.
That sounds so weird. But, It is true. I have recipes. I have pickling spices. I have jars. I have the internet to search for new and exciting recipes. And, tomorrow I’ll hopefully have jars full of a brand new (to me) squash pickle recipe.
You read that right, squash pickles. I also plan on making a beet relish. The recipe calls for horseradish, but I have fresh dill so I may use that instead. Is it wise to monkey with a recipe you’ve never tried before? Probably not. Will I do it anyway? It wouldn’t be the first time.
The good news: I got my stuff moved (aside from my kitchen stuff) before the hot weather set in.
The bad news: The hot weather set in.
A friend of mine once had this theory that you should eat hot foods when it is hot out and cold foods when it is cold out. I don’t know if there is any truth to this, but her theory was that if you raise your core temperature (with a nice steaming bowl of soup in your belly), you kick off the bodies defenses and it works to make you cooler. Or, if you lower your internal temperature with a big banana split, you spur your body to make itself warm again.
I was thinking about this today while I was reading with a fan on and the curtains closed. Or, at least trying to read. But, all I could think about was ice cream. So, I went out and got some. In fact, that is what I had for dinner. Ice cream sandwiches! (And, swiss chard slaw, the recipe for which I got off the the internet. I may now be headed for bed, but first I have to go take a cold shower. It is still scorching up in heah!
As, you may know, It is the World Cup. I like to think of this as a month long holiday that happens every four years where all of the world stops and wonders, “Who will be the next champion?”
Now that we’re out of the group stage, past the round of 16 and into the quarters a lot of people, myself included, have found ourselves without a team to cheer on from here on in (Go, USA!). Honestly, my bracket has been completely destroyed. I was just listening to a piece on NPR about who to follow now. And, the guy suggested that instead of looking for a team to root for, you can look for a team to root against. In general, I like this suggestion because I’m a snarky human being. However, my favorite team to root against is also out. (Sorry, England.)
But, I unexpectedly found a new team to support while watching my team (Go USA!). Ghana is a lot of fun to watch (unless they’re playing the US.) They’ve knocked us out of two World Cups (boo!). Also, they’ve never won a World Cup (only seven countries have ever won the World Cup: (West) Germany, England, Uruguay, Brazil, Italy, Argentina and France). How awesome would it be to watch a first time winner at the first Championship held on the African Subcontinent? Go, Ghana!
You may have seen this post on the Newsweek blog or the Metafilter thread that inspired it, but in case you haven’t you should.
A guy found out some friends of his had come from Russia with the promise of work only to have the work fall through at the last minute. They were then told to go from D.C. (where the work was supposed to be) to New York City to meet with a new potential employer at midnight about hostessing jobs. Thinking this sounded fishy and like his friends may have found themselves in a human trafficking situation, but not being in D.C. to help, he turned to the internet, to MetaFilter, to ask for assistance. While things aren’t completely settled yet, the women are still safely in New York with someone who read about the situation on MetaFilter and offered to help.
You read a lot of stuff about people meeting on the internet and things ending badly, kidnapping, pedophile, etc. It is nice to see a situation where the internet was used in order to keep people out of a dangerous situation. It is also nice to see someone reaching out for help and other people being there to answer.
It is gorgeous out today, and it seemed wrong to waste it (although, I do have other things I should probably be doing). My first thought was, “Ooh, ice cream. That should totally happen.” But, then I thought, “Yes, yes it should…after going for a bike ride.” I’ve had the bike for about a year and it has served me well. A friend of mine’s roommate tried to throw it out. Who throws away a practically brand new bike? My friend saved it and gave it to me. Since then, I’ve gone on many midnight-head clearing rides. Few things help writing/studying like a quick spin around the block. Who would have guessed that?
So, there is a trail nearish to my house. I know about it because it ends at a busy street with a park on the other side. I wondered if there was a back street way to get to the trail. I figured that would be a nice little ride. I’ll tool around the neighborhood to see if I can get to that trail.
It was no problem. I was actually there in no time. Blood and endorphins pumping, I thought I’d ride a little way on the trail and see how far I got. I started at mile marker 5.1. I made it to marker 2.6. Not bad. And, I may have gone further except that my handlebars were a little loose.
You probably shouldn’t ride a bike with loose handlebars.
It happens that around the 2.6 mile marker, the trail a road are rather close together. It was a road I recognized, so I just popped over to it and rode home.
While I was riding home, the seat started magically readjusting itself. My knees got closer and closer to my chest as I road the last quarter(?) mile or so.
One probably should ride on a self-readjusting seat.
So, I took it into the bike shop after I got home and they fixed it for me. It shouldn’t do that anymore. I am planning on riding to school tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes.
I occasionally go to Autocompleteme for a laugh. Today, while on a study break, I headed over there for a chuckle.
Laughing is good for the soul, you know.
And, I did last heartily at a first line from a Theodore Roethke poem out of context. I don’t know why I found it so funny, maybe because it is finals week and I do know the inexorable sadness of pencils. And, coffee pots. And, long hours and clicking keys. It was surprising, this laugh that it pulled from me. It was wonderful.
The poem itself is kind of a downer, commenting on the isolation and loneliness of the modern world. It does have a good first line, though.
This man, Valentin Abe, has built a hatchery in Haiti. He then shares his fish with local fisherman (who can’t fish anymore because their lakes have been overfished) to farm the fish. This is just a great idea.
I was thinking other day about how you could know all these little facts about a person and not really know anything about them. For example, my previous post on Amanda Palmer. I knew that she was engaged to a writer I like and that was pretty much it. And, I’ve collected all manner of other little facts over the course of the six months or so I’ve followed her on twitter. Life seems to be a little bit like that. We gather all these interesting little facts about things but knowing facts doesn’t necessarily translate into knowing something “real” about a thing. (Of course, we can debate on and on about what I mean about “knowing something ‘real’”. There is potentially a lot to unpack in that sentence. But, basically, what I mean is that I know that AFP just co-produced something with Jason Webley, she’s getting married, apparently she’s from the Boston area, but I’m not sure I’d recognize her if I were sardined up against her in a rush-hour packed subway car and even if I did and I was like, “AFP!” that I’d be able to carry on any sort of coherent discourse with the woman. But, if we were talking about my sister, I can tell you both general things about her like what she’s up to but I can also have, and do have, interesting conversations with her whether or not I’m accidently sardined into a rush-hour packed subway care with her. Basically, the information about my sister I’ve gathered from genuine interaction with my sister whereas the information I’ve gathered about AFP I’ve gotten from twitter and her website.)
Which brings me to my point. There is a lot of information about there in the connections and terminuses (termini? terminae?) of the interwebs and with the right software there is an awful lot you can find out about yourself or others if you choose to search. Like, where they live. Like, their email addresses. Like, their credit scores and how much the home they live in is actually worth. I find this a little creepy. And, I find it creepier that sites like Spokeo.com make this sort of random fact aggregation about the value of one’s home and one’s credit score even easier by listing all of this information for one place. There is probably nothing I can do about nosy people finding out these little facts about me, but I do think they should have to work for it. I don’t think there should be one stop shopping in terms of getting someone a set of facts about someone else.
