We're BROTHERS!

This is a time lapse...

 They settle, lick, fight, settle, repeat.  lots of love between the tabby brothers.

One week ago today...

We set the table so nicely! All our wedding presents come into play! The tablecloth is from Aunt Sally and the china was Grammy and Grandfather's.

Roasted vengtables, nicely carved roasted chicken, and mashed potatoes. Yum!

After dinner we took turns relaxing with Raj who does not mind being covered with the blanket.

Red kitchen is red!

What we did over Thanksgiving break: I graded lab reports. Eric played Borderlands and pwned newbs in LOL. Then we got down to business and painted the kitchen cabinets red! It looks pretty boss and wicked, we think. The plan is one day to spraypaint stencils over the red, which will only add to the awesomeness. Here they are, for your viewing pleasure:

This one is to show you the red color most clearly.

The cats really liked having all the doors off their hinges while we were painting them. Mo is really mad that I can actually see him though. 

Our house at night

I asked Eric if he'd be willing to put up Christmas lights on our house, so we got Christmas lights yesterday and Eric decided to hang them right away. They look pretty jaunty, right? Nice doinks over the garage and windows, especially. Now he wants to get MORE lights and hang them around the back patio... I may have unleashed a monster!

The cats like the baby's things.

Pocky in Henry's hat

Maurice and Garage in the high chair and the car seat

Garage in the sling

Pocky in the sling

Garage is ready to go for a stroll!

Peopling

I am afraid that the world continues to people (I am using it as a verb).  Margaret and I are also peopling.  Meaning we will soon generate an "I".  Something that is and is aware it is.  Creating life can be philosophically difficult... HELP ME ALAN WATTS!

What am I doing with my life?

From the right and the left... Bam

First up from the left.  A video showcasing how to make an axe at home!  This is pretty old school using very primitive technology but it is beautifully shot and makes me want to be a little bit more primitive!



Now from the right.  Scientists have not only proposed a method of faster then light space travel  (10x faster in fact) but not only that they may have even made it feasible!  Read this article on warp fields and be amazed that warp engines are a possibility if the math is good.  I dont expect our bodies could handle it but since space time is not warped inside the ships "bubble" it is a possibility....

http://news.yahoo.com/warp-drive-may-more-feasible-thought-scientists-161301109.html

So there you go.  The past and the future both blowing my mind.

Mawg wanted me to share this with the world

I hope this is true

According to Wikipedia it actually is.  This isn't a fabrication or exaggeration like most of Micheal Moore's documentaries.  Norway seriously is the shit.  Moving there immediately....

Goodbye Ponneack

So back in May my Pontiac broke down at a busy intersection and we had it towed home, and there it sat until last Wednesday. We donated it to Colorado Public Radio, which means we get a tax deduction and a membership, and when Ira Glass demands that we contribute during the fundraising campaigns we can ignore him for a little longer. It was incredibly easy to donate. They did not care that it is undriveable and just sent a tow truck to take care of it.

It was my very first car. I had a moment of insight while driving on the Beltway with Johnnie a few weeks before I needed to be owning a car so I could drive myself to Penland. I thought, "I know! I want a green Pontiac Grand Am with a manual transmission!" And when we got home I checked online, and there was a great used one for sale about an hour away. I could not drive stick yet so Dad had to go with me both to actually pay for the car and to drive it home.

He took me to the high school parking lot and showed me what to do. Then I drove around for a week and stalled out on a speed bump right in front of a cop, who checked if I was all right and laughed when I said I was fine, just learning to drive stick.

I took the car to Penland and back, and then to Annapolis, and then when I joined ACE I flew home and drove the car out to Salt Lake City. Then on our days off we could drive wherever we wanted, especially nice since the Europeans couldn't usually rent cars (or at least not for a more reasonable price). We drove to Santa Cruz and San Dimas, to Denver and back to Flagstaff. We saw King's Canyon and Sequoia National Forest, and Water Lube! Then I was done with ACE and drove to Fort Collins and left the car there in a CSU parking lot while I took a Greyhound back to Maryland! That was an experience for another post...

Then I moved to Fort Collins for real and met Eric and taught him how to drive stick by going around and around the oval late one night. We didn't drive too far with it together, but we did go to Santa Fe and to the Wyoming Rodeo.

The point is, I drove it across the whole country and then some before it even thought about giving up, which is good for an old car. It was a lot of driving, and I have a lot of good memories associated with those drives. I would much rather have fixed it than give it up, because I am sentimental like that. Goodbye car!

I love love love Russell

"This is the morality of the Slave State, applied in circumstances totally unlike those in which it arose. No wonder the result has been disastrous. Let us take an illustration. Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?"

"In praise of Idleness" by Bertrand Russell is one of the greatest writings I have read in a long time.

spicy peaches to go!

I made spicy peach jam last weekend. It's amazing. Here is a "recipe", in narrative form, for you to try. This made 72 ounces of jam, which I canned. You can make less and eat all of it at once, and then you don't have to can anything. Or you can make the same amount and eat all of it a once and die from spiciness. And peach overdose.

So. Take 6 pounds of halved, pitted peaches (~12 cups). Boil them. Use the high heat to get them to a boil perhaps and then reduce to medium so it isn't too crazy. Maybe also add a leeeetle bit of water to the pan at the beginning so the peaches don't burn before they start releasing their juices. Once they're on the mushy side, mush them up. I use the immersion blender which is least messy or you could think of some creative method. If you peel the peaches first you probably don't need to blend them at all, but the peach peels won't break down on their own which makes for a odd-textured condiment.

Once they're mushed, add sugar (4.5 cups) and stir well. The sugar is nice since fresh peaches can be secretly a little sour. If you're making preserves you have to add this much sugar, the sugar has preserving power. It changes the osmolarity of the solution so that bacteria are more likely to burst than to survive and eat all the peaches before you can. So, if you're not canning this jonx you can add as much or as little sugar as you choose. Honestly, though, nice and sweet tastes pretty darn good.

As the peaches cook they also release protein which makes a foam on the liquid's surface. Skim that foam. Put it in a dish and taste it while you cook, it is delicious and not poisonous at all! Just peachy! Once no more foam is rising to the surface, the peaches are done cooking. You can keep cooking them of course, it will make for a thicker jam. If you're not sure if you like how thick it is, see how well the sauce coats a spoon. The spoon will quickly reveal the jam's true thickness.


Then I let it cool down, maybe go for a swim at Horsetooth or something fun like that for a couple hours. (This is a lot of peaches! It doesn't want to cool down at all, it wants to be hot AND spicy!) This is so I can taste it properly when I'm adding in the spices. I add cayenne pepper, paprika, and chile powder (which does also have a little bit of cumin, onion powder, and garlic powder in it, but it only helps the situation). Also ground up chiles (which are chiles only) are nice. And ground red pepper. I add the spices by the 1/2 teaspoon and taste often. I think for this batch it ended up with 1 teaspoon GRP, 1/2 teaspoon plus a bit of chile powder and 1 teaspoon paprika. I didn't have ground chiles or cayenne (I used those in apricot jam though, and that's good too). It's really nice to have a tasting platform like little pieces of bread with cream cheese or graham crackers or even... toast!

And then I heat everything back up to boiling and can it. The blog Food in Jars (link goes straight to recipe index) has good information on small batches of jam (like, how much fruit makes a nice little batch and how much sugar to add to that little bit of fruit) and on canning in general. Even yogurt-making.

Henjoy!

summertime summertime

small version

large version!

too cool for anything.

We went to Horsetooth Reservoir on Sunday and went swimming! The water was very nice. I found it a pleasant cool temperature but Eric turned blue almost instantly. I can't believe we haven't gone before, especially since it's maybe 5 minutes from our house. There's no beach at this swimming spot per se so you look to shore from the water and see a sharp and rocky hillside, which helps keep me in the water. The entry is very gooey or "muddy" and if you're slow to get in then you can sink to your ankles and get kind of stuck in the sludge, and then you have no maneuverability if say a large motorboat comes by and makes a big wake. Oopsies! Also we saw a giant crayfish with a clear skeleton. Eric says they don't bite people, the crayfish are too fast for that, but what does he know about insects? (He says it's not an insect, it's an arthropod. Proves my point.)

It's been cloudy and cool since then. I think something like fall might be starting to happen. I have also started thinking I hear geese sometimes...

Our pregnancy book keeps telling us how the baby will startle and respond to loud noises. So we do a lot of shouting at my belly. No noticeable responses yet - Eric says he's going to be guaranteed startle-proof by the time he's born. Eric's favorite shout of the moment is Bapes!

bapes!

They feel just like eyeballs. I would know, I've felt a lot of eyeballs.

Getting all political again....

So hears a song....


"But tomorrow , you'll cook dinner for the neighbors and their kids.We can rip apart the socialists and all their damn taxes.You'll see I am no criminal, I'm down on both bad knees.I'm just too much a coward to admit when I'm in need."

best present ever!

Thanks Mark!

50+ medium-large silkworms, with a sillkworm house, mulberry leaf powder, and a grater! The grater is for grating the cooked mulberry leaf powder into the silkworm house. In a month or so the cocoon-spinning should begin. Then I can boil the cocoons (which, yes, means boiling the little wormies alive) and get some home-grown silk!

The next frontier: making linen from my own flax. But just you try searching for "flax seed fiber variety" and finding anything but dietary supplements.... [There are two varieties of Linum usitatissimum, one grown for the oily seed and the other for its nice long bast fibers.]

for the curious...

There's a little baby boy in there!

La la la! Serene mother and all that.

Hi biscus!

Look at all the buds on there! Oh, mallows.

So Singapore's population is decreasing fast

And then this became a thing...



R Kelly can suck it.

the conference is concluded

The best part?

The lake!

I hope I can be as awesome as this dad...

More songs!

My mother must have read the blog so she sent me these for your enjoyment...





Never listened to Kenny but he's a lot less annoying then I thought he would be.

Margaret is away.

Mawg is not in town so I have had little to preoccupy me. Mostly I get to listen to a lot of music.  Also it is allowing me a little time to think about being a father.  It gets more real everyday.  I find being the father during this event is not very interesting and I am kind of out of the loop.  I will have nine months of catching up to do when the dude is here!  Either way it seems that all the music I listen to is about babies or at least thats how my mind is twisting the lyrics.  Most recently "Two Headed Boy Pt. 2" is doing it, so here it is.

Daddy please hear this song that I sing
In your heart there's a spark that just screams
For a lover to bring a child to your chest that could lay as you sleep
And love all you have left like your boy used to be
Long ago wrapped in sheets warm and wet

Blister please with those wings in your spine
Love to be with a brother of mine
How he'd love to find your tongue in his teeth
In a struggle to find secret songs that you keep wrapped in boxes so tight
Sounding only at night as you sleep 

And in my dreams you're alive and you're crying,
As your mouth moves in mine, soft and sweet,
Rings of flowers 'round your eyes
And Ill love you for the rest of your life when you're ready

Brother see we are one in the same
And you left with your head filled with flames
And you watched as your brains fell out through your teeth
Push the pieces in place 
Make your smile sweet to see 
Don't you take this away 
I'm still wanting my face on your cheek

And when we break we'll wait for our miracle
God is a place where some holy spectacle lies 
When we break we'll wait for our miracle
God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life

Two headed boy she is all you could need
She will feed you tomatoes and radio wires
And retire to sheets safe and clean
But don't hate her when she gets up to leave

our baby

We brought home some gifts from Eric's lab - a baby bath and a baby holster for riding on the bike. But look who decided to get all cozy! Little baby Mosef that's who! After I took these pictures Mo took a good long nap right there. Also, PS, all three cats hang out all the time, no big deal. Look at them all, hanging out, in their separate and distinct areas.

now we're talkin

Eric is always fixing the drainpipe and installing ceiling fans and other helpful things. Sometimes I have to say, "Stop fixing things all the time! Just relax!"

A quick morning's harvest. There's about 50 more where that came from. Too bad they won't ship to Maryland (or California, or Louisiana). The basket is a relic from Lewis' Orchard.