december 2006
december 31 2006 00:51 est after some reflection on the tennis games we played today, i'm quite looking forward to the indoor soccer season that is coming up this spring. i haven't played soccer on even a semi-regular basis since college, and even that was on a team (i hesitate to even call it a team- it was more like a roving band of hoodlums who just happened to enjoy kicking a ball around) whose roster was indeterminate, whose name was so uncouth that the league manager misprinted it intentionally on all printed materials, and whose players regularly smoked cigarettes during warm-ups and the halftime break.
in all of those ways, it was wholly unlike my ayso experience, but at the same time, it was exactly like ayso. during those games the adults were welcome to stand on the sidelines and scream all they liked, but we were the ones who would decide the outcome of the game.
this has been a good break, and 2007 is going to be a great year.
december 29 2006 11:02 est OMG BEES
december 22 2006 22:27 pst packing wildly. feeling guilty about leaving the cat alone. we saw a nutria last week! i thought it was an otter until we saw it get out of the water so that we could see its tail.
december 21 2006 00:12 pst a recipe for chinese chicken salad:
- 1 head savoy or napa cabbage
- 1 or two heads 'baby' bok choy
- 1 pound safeway fried chicken tenders
- 3 short sticks of celery
- 3 whole clemetine seedless mandarin oranges, or
- 2 cans mandarin orange slices, drained
- 2 tablespoon ranch or honey mustard dressing
- 1 tablespoon packed brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon white vinegar
- 2 teaspoons sesame oil
- 1 teaspoon whole fresh ginger
- 1 tablespoon whole white sesame seeds
- some fresh cilantro for garnish optional:
- 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
- 1 teaspoon fresh black pepper
- 2 green onions
- 1 pinch chinese 5-spice powder
- 1 small sweet red pepper
- 1 small asian pear
Cut cabbage into quarters on the radial axis and then remove the stem. slice across quarters into 2mm sections. place shredded cabbage in large bowl. slice bok choy and celery perpendicular to long axis into similar 1-2 mm sections and combine with cabbage. peel oranges and separate into sections, or open cans of oranges and drain, then combine orange sections with cabbage and other greens. If using pear and/or onion and/or red pepper, slice very thin and remove seeds, then combine in large bowl with cabbage mix.
grate fresh ginger root very fine through microplane into a separate bowl. more ginger = more heat. to the grated ginger, add ranch dressing, brown sugar, vinegar, sesame oil, sea salt, black pepper, and 5-spice powder. stir all this stuff together until sugar is thoroughly incorporated- salt can still be somewhat granular.
slice fried chicken tenders perpendicular to long axis into 1-cm thick chunks. pour dressing over cabbage mix, dump chicken on top, toss to coat cabbage and chicken thoroughly with dressing. plate individual servings, and then sprinkle liberally with sesame seeds and garnish with cilantro. serve with wasabi and chilled sake, or sapporo and sriracha hot sauce. feeds 2 hungry people with leftovers, or 4-6 people with a second course.
december 20 2006 15:32 pst just for reference, tomorrow is the actual solstice. here in eugene, sunrise is 7:47 am, and sunset will be 4:29 pm. that works out to about 8.75 hours of daylight. 30 days from now, sunset is half an hour later. in six months when the summer solstice rolls around, we'll be getting 15.5 hours of sun per day- that's a pretty dramatic swing.
just for the sake of contrast, sunrise in los angeles today was at 6:53, and their sunset is at 4:46. on june 21 their day starts at 5:41, and ends at 8:07, so we get about an extra hour here in the summer compared to the folks in lala land.
i'm not just making these numbers up. i'm sure there are useful utilities all over the place that calculate the same thing, but here's a link to one of them that lets you print your own calendar with sunrise and sunset times on it.
december 20 2006 9:58 pst there is still frost on the grass in the backyard. we've been waking up before the sun for the last 3 weeks or so, and looking forward to the days growing longer again. i'm reading seed catalogs, thinking happy thoughts about chili peppers and tomato plants.
exams are done. that's a huge relief. i had a series of nightmares before the tests, usually about the cases we had read in class. last night, i had a happy dream that i did well in the one class i was most worried about going in. not that i put a whole lot of stock in dreams, mind you, but it's nice to wake up without the surge of adrenaline first thing in the morning.
almost done with my christmas shopping. this year has been terrible- i'm leaving everythint until the last minute, and i feel very guilty about it, as though i should have done a better job of getting ready before school got hectic. oh well. now i know for next year, i guess. i was thinking about driving up to the outlet mall in woodburn to wrap it up for the last few folks on my list, but it's a 90-minute drive each way and i just can't face the idea of doing it solo.
i've had some time to work on the floors again this week too. the mouldings in the living room are just about done- a couple of complicated bits are left in the dining room area, not sure yet exactly what to do about that section, and i made a careless error on the fireplace section that's going to result in one moree trip to home depot, but all of the long runs in the main room are done. next challenge is going to be the transitions from the hallway into the bedrooms- still not sure exactly what we're going to do there... i know what i want, but i can't find any place around here that sells the supplies i need.
december 11 2006 14:48 pst today is a sad day. tivo seems to be dead. not that i've spent really any time at all watching teevee over the last three months, but i'm pretty sure it was full of interesting stuff, and that it's all gone now.
last exam is tomorrow at 8:30 am. i'm feeling woefully underprepared.
december 10 2006 23:15 pst last exam scheduled for tuesday. old fish is getting shut down tonight, we should get a new fish in the morning!
december 5 2006 21:50 pst exam is over. no idea how i did... it's essay-based, and hard to know what she's going to award points for in advance. also, it's on a curve. so i guess i'll just have to wait and see. civpro on friday, and contracts next week.
when we were in bend over thanksgiving, i was wondering about hot springs, and whether there were any nearby that we could go see. i remember going to see hot creek near mammoth mountain in california, in the long valley caldera. driving past the cinder cones along highway 97 made me wonder if there might be something similar near sunriver.
turns out there's a website that lists all of the hot springs in oregon. not too many of them are especially close to eugene or bend, but some are (sort of) on the way from one to the other. at least one of these has been colonized by the dirty hippies, and it's not clear from their hippie website if they allow outsiders to play in their pool without paying for it.
other interesting pacific-northwest geology and sights to see: the drumheller channels, the grand coulee and grand coulee dam, crater lake...
december 4 2006 21:32 pst torts exam tomorrow. i'm pretty nervous about this one. i was pretty worried about the last one too, but it seemed to go ok, and nobody knew what to expect. this one has a reputation.
