cooking
I've been trying to avoid wheat and carbohydrates, so when I saw this article I decided I could do that, but could make it in a bowl without crust. I made my own sauce and added chunks of pepperoni, some lebanon bologna, and bacon, covered with mozzarella and parmesan cheeses. I added mushrooms and black olives to two of them. They turned out great! A little oily, perhaps, but really delicious.
I spent most of today running errands -- it turns out you need to run errands, even in paradise. We ran the trap line around 10am. One of the traps had gone missing -- probably carried off by dogs. We searched around the trap side -- I went on a wide search all around, but we couldn't find it. Sigh. Another dead mongoose, probably.
As soon as we got back from the field, I led an expedition to the store. We stopped at KMart -- mainly to get rum. I got a bottle of pineapple flavored rum and a larger bottle of estate dark rum. The college kids go through it fast. We also got some johnny cakes and donuts. I'd been dreaming of the donuts since we'd been in the store last week. They'd been cooking the donuts and I could smell them while I was standing in line. Mmmm... Donuts....
The grocery store, we bought an enormous amount of beer and I laid in some more breakfast provisions and the ingredients for Thai Curry for tonight. Someone tried to make curry a few days ago and it didn't turn out well, so I wanted to make curry that was good. It has turn out quite well, but people aren't back yet. :-(
After the grocery store, I ran Tricia to the airport to drop off their rental car. Jacob, Tricia and their kids leave tomorrow. Luckily, the rest of us have a few more days in paradise. We still need to do the Cruzan rum tour (I'm not sure I need to go this time) and go to the East end. And we really should go out to Monk's Bath -- that's a tradition now!
We've got two mongooses out with tracking devices now. Now, if we can just recover the devices, we can actually get some data. It would be great to get some data.
We've been talking about grandiose plans for the next year. There is a road construction project going on in the refuge and we might be able to get funding to build some nature trails as part of the project. I'm going to think about getting my writing students to write some prose we could use for a guide to the refuge. Why not?
It's been great having Jacob here. We've been talking about establishing a network that could feed data back to us all year from the refuge. If we set up the network, we could use it for a lot of things: mongooses sure, but maybe dogs, tortoises, and land-crabs. Do people want to know where the land-crabs go? If they do, we could answer that question with these devices.
Today, I finished the last of the grading and submitted all of my students' grades. I had a couple of students with questions and concerns that I addressed promptly. Afterward, I joined Tom and Buzz at Packards, a bar in Northampton, for lunch and a couple of pints of beer. We had a nice time chatting -- Tom and I had missed the previous lunch at Opa Opa last week due to the blizzard and other bad luck. It was good to get caught up.
Earlier, Lucy and I went to Lukasik's Game Farm and picked up a couple of small geese for our Christmas feast. Lucy and Buzz both guessed that I had wanted to have goose as a result of Dicken's Christmas Carol, but I don't think that's it.
As a young man, I became fascinated with having roast goose. We never had goose growing up, but at some point, I began to pester Lucy about wanting roast goose until she finally got me one at some point and I got to try it. It was fine. It was even better than fine: it was the fulfillment of a lifetime ambition of mine at the age of 14 or something. I'm not quite sure how the idea got into my head, but I have a suspicion.
There is a section in the Three Musketeers in which the musketeers have gone to the Parpaillot to breakfast and keep getting interrupted, so they make a bet with someone that they will go breakfast in a bastion and simultaneously hold it against the enemy for an hour:
"And what bastion is it?" asked a dragoon, with his saber run through a
goose which he was taking to be cooked.
"The bastion St. Gervais," replied d'Artagnan, "from behind which the
Rochellais annoyed our workmen."
"Was that affair hot?"
"Yes, moderately so. We lost five men, and the Rochellais eight or ten."
"Blazempleu!" said the Swiss, who, notwithstanding the admirable
collection of oaths possessed by the German language, had acquired a
habit of swearing in French.
"But it is probable," said the light-horseman, "that they will send
pioneers this morning to repair the bastion."
"Yes, that's probable," said d'Artagnan.
"Gentlemen," said Athos, "a wager!"
"Ah, wooi, a vager!" cried the Swiss.
"What is it?" said the light-horseman.
"Stop a bit," said the dragoon, placing his saber like a spit upon the
two large iron dogs which held the firebrands in the chimney, "stop a
bit, I am in it. You cursed host! a dripping pan immediately, that I may
not lose a drop of the fat of this estimable bird."
"You was right," said the Swiss; "goose grease is good with pastry."
I'm not sure, but I think this may be what fascinated me as a young man about the idea of eating goose.
It's the last weekend of Intersession and the students start up again on Monday. Today is the deep breath before the storm. Everyone has been running around getting stuff ready. I'm generally pleased with where we've gotten.
Yesterday, I had lunch with friends and was able to introduce Tom to Rodger. I've been wanting to make that happen because they clearly are of similar phenotypes. They both are full of ideas and can't wait to make stuff happen and get stuff done. I can't wait to find out what they do next.
I'm overjoyed that I'll be working with Tom this semester on updating the Biology Department website. I've been trying to get to that for more than a year, but simply haven't found the time. It's a big undertaking and you need substantial blocks of time to focus on it. It will be easier to find the time to do with Tom.
Not everyone loves me, though. I was hurt and disappointed recently by the lengths one faculty member went to in order to undermine and sabotage a project with me in order to avoid working with me. I recently heard someone describe this behavior as "they don't have enough time to do it once right, but enough time to do it twice."
On Thursday, Buzz and I met with guy in Computer Science about building data collection devices to track mongoose movements. It was a great meeting with a free flow of ideas and excitement. If we want to do it, we'll need to raise some money, but it would generate a lot of really interesting data.
Now it's Sunday, and I'm putting the finishing touches on my course site. It will still require a lot of work over the course of the semester, but I'm generally pleased. I've got a great new project for the students to work on and I'm optimistic that it will be my best semester yet.
I attended the Amherst Democratic Town Committee meeting for the first time in about 6 months. I resigned as secretary last year after the committee had, I felt, turned away from trying to represent or engage the community and had become the Impeachment Committee. I served for several months trying to redirect the committee toward a more productive and relevant course of action, but eventually gave up.
The main item on the agenda was a motion by Leo Maley against casino gambling. It was a good motion, narrowly crafted, that focused on gambling as a missed opportunity to have a more productive discussion about improving taxation. But I went to the meeting to oppose the resolution.
I personally don't think gambling is a good idea. People talk about it being like a regressive tax on the poor, but its really more like a tax on the stupid. I think it only affects poor people more because stupid people are frequently also poor. Maybe people think that, because they think poor people are stupider than other people. It also taxes the deluded and the addicted -- and some of those people ruin their lives with gambling. That's sad, but those people are doing these things today anyway.
As some of us have noticed, there is gambling available all around us. There are racetracks and booking facilities in Massachusetts. There are lottery machines in every convenience store. And you don't have to drive very far to go to a casino if that's really what you want. In fact, Massachusetts residents spend more than $800 million in casinos in Connecticut. Furthermore, it seems nearly certain that, irregardless of what the Governor does, the Wampanoag tribe is going to open a casino anyway.
Deval Patrick looked at the issues and decided to propose allowing a limited number of casinos. I think the primary reason he did it is jobs. In spite of the heated rhetoric on both sides, casinos don't seem to have big impacts on most aspects of the communities in which they're located. They do, however, result in more jobs, dispersed among more people.
I think Deval has been trying everything he can think of to fix Springfield. He's been trying get UMass to do anything it can think of to fix Springfield too. He doesn't have a magic bullet, so he's using what he's got. None of its perfect, but having more jobs seems better than not having more jobs. Unless you've already got a job.
I think Deval also thinks that, if we're going to have casinos, we might as well do it in a way that gives the state some ability to influence what happens. If our citizens are going to gamble -- and they are -- we can use revenues from it to help deal with the bankruptcies and ruined lives that inevitably result.
Everyone at the meeting was invited to speak on the motion. I spoke against it, but nearly everyone else was for it. In spite of Leo's motion being primarily about "improving taxation", most people cited a moral opposition to gambling as their primary reason for supporting the resolution. Someone claimed that the goal of the casino proposal was to increase the number of gamblers in the state and, after that, several others spoke passionately about how despicable that goal was.
The committee voted to adopt the resolution, with a few amendments. I proposed an amendment to the motion saying "Whereas casino gambling promotes sin and immoral behavior;" since that was the actual reason most of the people had cited in supporting the resolution, which actually didn't mention those things. My amendment was rejected.
It was an interesting discussion. The fact that Leo and I had actually brought some research on the topic, meant that it was not purely opinion that drove the discussion. Although I personally think that gambling is unpleasant and stupid, I don't have a problem with people choosing to spend their time and money that way. Its just another dumb way to spend money, really. I think professional spectator sports are stupid too, but I don't think they should be outlawed just because they're stupid and pointless.
In the end, I was most uncomfortable by the prospect that well-educated and well-off people were so willing to impose their morality on others in the guise of protecting them -- especially if it means that unemployed people won't get the jobs that they might otherwise get. I don't agree with everything Deval Patrick has done, but I think he's doing the right kinds of things.
I used to be a serious amateur photographer. I had an SLR and a bunch of lenses. When I had kids, I found that you only got about 18 seconds to setup and take a picture, so I quit using my SLR and we got a point-and-shoot camera. As the transition to digital happened, I kept watching and checking every year or two to see if someone would come out with a digital back that would let me use my old lenses. Finally, Pentax came through.
Yesterday I got a K100D. Boy, is it amazing! I've only begun to explore its capabilities. I've had good success using a point-and-click camera to take snapshots, but I've found it limiting when I wanted to do more serious photography. I don't think that will happen with this camera
It's going to take me a while to get the hang of using the new camera. When I did photography more seriously, I knew my camera extremely well and had a good sense for how to achieve the effects I wanted. Now, I'm going to have to start over, scrape the rust off those neurons, and figure that stuff out again.
I'm hoping this camera lasts a reasonable time. My old Pentax camera probably lasted for 10 years. I've been happy with the functionality of the Canon point-and-shoot cameras I've gotten, but disappointed that they all seemed to require service. Today I saw this article that seems to suggest that Canon thinks that *most* of their cameras would need to be returned over a three-year period for service. That seems pretty lame, to me. Cameras are complex and are out in the real world with dirt, grit, etc, but to expect *most* to require service within three years seems like an awfully short lifespan.
I was supposed to go the fitness club this morning with Lucy, but overslept. To make it up to her, I fixed omelets for each of us. I fixed Lucy what she requested -- a cheese omelet -- but I made a special omelet for myself.
When Alisa and I lived in Kalamazoo, there was a great little restaurant named Maggie's near campus that made a couple of great, unique breakfast dishes. My favorite was always the Mexican Omelet. Here is my omage to it:
Ekde mia juneco, mi kaj mia frato esploris prepari italan pasteĉon. Mi ŝatas pensi ke mi nun estas spertulo: mi povas komenci kun faruno kaj tomata pasto, kaj post horo kaj duono, jen bongustan italan pasteĉon. Kiam mi estis junulo, mi studis en Hispanio. Mi loĝis kun maljuna virino kiu preparis por ni ĉiujn manĝojn. Mi decidis danki ŝin per preparo de italan pasteĉon. Ŝi iom dubis ĉu ŝi lasu nin fari tion (iufoje, usona knabino kiu restis ĉe ŝi preparis ovaĵon, kiu estis bruligita "kiel karbono", ŝi diris). Sed finfine ni konvinkis ŝin. Mi kaj mia amiko vojaĝis al magazeno kaj aĉetis ĉion necesan. Estis tre malfacila trovi ĉion: oni vokas aferojn malsame en malsamaj landoj. Mozarela fromaĝo oni ne havas: ni devis uzi "francan fromaĝon". "Pepperoni" oni ne havis: ni devis uzi ĉorizon. Sed ni trovis ĉion necesan, preparis la pasteĉon kaj montri ĝin al ŝi. Ŝi miris kiom bona ĝi aspektis: "Que presentaci
