Night Lights

I have never been able to sleep throughout the night; I'm usually up and prowling around at least once, more often twice during a typical sleep cycle. Because of this I have three night lights placed in strategic locations. The one in the bathroom up and died recently, so I purchased a light sensitive LED plug-in unit to replace it. I quite like its bluish, icy glow. I also ordered some LED replacement bulbs for the rest of the night lights. I think that leaves me with just one light bulb I've not converted to CFL or LED. The last hold out is a bare bulb, suspended by an ancient cord, that lights the pantry. I've not changed that bulb in the six years I've lived here; I'm just wondering how long it will last at this point.

The weather forecast is calling for an ice storm and other assorted nasty weather tonight. The city is going to be trying out a beet juice formula on the icy roads tonight. Sadly, it's not going to turn the roads bright pink in the process.

I may take a snow day tomorrow, depending on the conditions of the not-pink roads and my overall mood. I've put some cranberry beans on to soak overnight - bean soup is on the menu for dinner tomorrow. I almost always make my bean soup with tomatoes; I'm going to try using tomatillos instead this time and see what the results are like. I'll report back.

Finally, Jim Butcher will be posting the first four chapters of Small Favors, Book 10 in the Dresden Files series, which is due out in April. Chapter One is up now, with a new chapter to be released over the next three Tuesdays.

Discovering the Theremin

Tonight I was reading a short story by Joe Hill (You Will Hear the Locust Sing, in 20th Century Ghosts) when I came across the word theremin. The Free Dictionary only had this to say:

An electronic instrument played by moving the hands near its two antennas, often used for high tremolo effects.

I didn't give it another thought until I saw a scrap of trivia on Soundscapes (a cable channel that plays ambient music) that said the theremin was developed in 1920 by Leon Theremin. Obviously, I had to do more investigation.

The theremin is "played" without actually touching it; moving a hand close to the vertical antenna increases the pitch, while closing in on the horizontal decreases the volume. The eerie sounds produced by this instrument made it a favorite in 1950s and 60s sci-fi films, including The Day The Earth Stood Still.

Here is a music sample: The Funeral March by Kevin Sinnott
Kevin wrote this song and performed all parts on a Kees Enkelaar theremin.



The photo and music are by way of Theremin World. Should you desire further information, that's the place to be.

Giving away what?

I boxed up a bunch of books to send to my sister today and took them to the post office. When it was my turn at the counter, I told the clerk I wanted to send the box via media mail, which is the cheap rate for books and other printed matter. She gave me the price and told me that media mail was subject to inspection and if the material inside wasn't media it would be returned. I said the box contained all the Harry Potter books and she looked absolutely crestfallen. "You're giving away all your Harry Potter books?" I quickly explained that I'd bought myself a nifty new boxed set and I was giving my old books to my niece and nephew, then she brightened right up again. We were quite chummy by the time I'd completed my transaction.

In other news, I'd really like to get my hands on one of these cheese making kits.

Finally, here's something really useful; how to stop that annoying "unused icons" balloon from popping up on your Windows PC.

Huckabee Burgoo

I'm only posting this because the video talks about squirrels and burgoo. For the record, I don't hunt and I've never eaten squirrel, nor do I plan to do either. Besides, what sort of person would choose a president based on whether that candidate ever cooked squirrel?

Wicked

As part of my personal effort to reduce my energy consumption, I've been hanging my clothes to dry rather than using the coin-operated dryer in the basement. Since I live in a one bedroom apartment, this does take up a fair bit of living space on wash day. I have one of the Frost drying racks from Ikea; I can get about one and a half loads of laundry on that, then I have a clothes line in the bedroom and another folding wooden rack. Since this takes up most of my bedroom, I turn on an electric box fan and aim it at the drying clothes to speed up the process a bit. On a normal day, everything but for the thickest socks and sweatshirts are dry in about four hours. This had me thinking about the energy savings (was I really saving energy by eschewing the dyer but using a fan?), so I used this calculator to tab it up. If I run the fan only for drying clothes, it tots up to 1.6 Kilowatt hours per month (about 20 cents worth at Duke Energy prices,) versus using the electric dryer for the same amount of laundry - 40 kWh/mo or $4.80. So I am saving both energy and money. That's cool.

I went to see the musical "Wicked" at the Aronoff matinée today. The stand-in for Elphaba was on stage today, Ms. Donna Vivino, and she was incredible. What a voice. Somehow or the other we scored box seats and it was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon.

Signs of the Pileated

I managed to get in a hike at Caldwell Nature Preserve today. The ground was rock hard except where I was crunching through frost heave. I didn't see another soul on the trails, although it was a balmy 27^o today; a far cry from the 4^o it was just yesterday morning.

I came across this scarred tree trunk on the Pawpaw trail. The large, elongated holes and the massive damage were clear signs that a Pileated Woodpecker had been at work here. They are huge black and white crow-sized birds with a magnificent red crest. I didn't actually see any today, but just a couple of minutes after I'd photographed this tree trunk, I did hear at least one calling from across the ravine. They are shy birds and are much more often heard than seen, so learning what their calls sound like is most helpful when searching them out.

Edited to remove broken link.

Ninja Shirt Folding

This is so cool. I can't wait to try it out on my laundry this weekend:



If you head over to the fold-your-shirt website, they have step by step directions available. Or you could search YouTube for "Japanese Shirt Folding" and find a laundry basket full of other videos that slow down the action.

So cranky

It's been just an exhausting day, compounded by the fact that Neighbor Girl decided Wednesday night was a good night to stay up -loudly- until 4:00 AM. The topper was Neighbor Girl's Stupid Friend hollering for her outside my window at 2:30 AM. When he got no response (not surprising, since she lives on the other side of the building,) he started throwing things at my window. Who does that? He got yelled at and and Neighbor Girl got a nasty note on her door this evening. I feel like such a grump, but dammit, I did lose three hours sleep to her shenanigans.

I vegged out to Animal Planet for a little while this evening and learned a new word in the process: Patagium

pa·ta·gi·um (pə-tā'jē-əm)
n. pl. pa·ta·gi·a (-jē-ə)

1. A thin membrane extending between the body and a limb to form a wing or winglike extension, as in bats and flying squirrels.
2. An expandable membranous fold of skin between the wing and body of a bird.


[Latin patagium, gold edging on a woman's tunic, perhaps from Greek *patageion, from patagos, clatter, of imitative origin .]

pa·ta'gi·al (-jē-əl) adj.

Repercussions

Today I learned that one should not gloat about a day off work, lest one arrive at work the following day to find that one's assignments were not taken care of whilst one was frolicking in the park. Indeed, I paid for my hubris with a nine and a half hour day today. I should have stayed longer but I was really out of steam by dinnertime.

Apparently today is National Pie Day. I'm down with that. Pie is a good thing.

Lastly, here's an interview with one of my favorite people on the planet, Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Oh glorious day off work when everyone else was working

I grocery shopped, went for a short run, napped on the couch and read a couple of short stories. It was just heavenly.

Then I made a few dishes to get me through the rest of this short week: a Thai seafood and veggie salad, steamed broccoli with miso sauce and an Eastern European red lentil soup. I also made a South Beach (tm) version of turkey hash for breakfast (I'm so tired of eggs or oatmeal) that uses turnips in place of potatoes. It came out really good; turnips have an undeserved bad rap in this country. In this dish they came out sweet and delicate and not at all worthy of the sneers I tend to get when I mention I've cooked turnips.

As I was washing the many, many dishes I dirtied during cooking I got to wondering why tumblers are called tumblers. After all, they are usually a short, squat glass which gives them more stability than tall drinking glasses and are therefore less likely to tumble. According to the wildly unreliable sources I found, they are called tumblers because they were first made with a rounded bottom, so if they were set down they would fall over. Several image searches have yielded nothing of the sort and I can't even find an answer as to when these allegedly round bottomed drinking glasses were first used. A trip to the antique mall (which would be fun anyway) might produce a better answer.

Snow day

There are few things quite so delicious as waking up to a snow storm on a work day - when you don't have to go to work.

Books for kids

Shamelessly ganked from Neil Gaiman's Blog: 100 Books Every Child Should Read

Heck, I think I should read the ones I've never read, too. Why should kids have all the fun?

People are going to think I have a squirrel fetish...

Everyone knows that squirrels bury nuts to store food over the winter and it's easy to observe this behavior in the fall. A scientist working in Wilkes University has found that when squirrels know they're being watched doing this, they will "pretend" to bury something about twenty percent of the time. It doesn't matter if the observer is another squirrel, a bird or a human either, they know they're being watched and start hiding invisible nuts:

Hot Chile Hands

I was watching an episode of Good Eats today when Alton mentioned a remedy for hot chile hand syndrome (see my earlier post on the subject.) According to Alton, and backed up by Soup Song, you can also neutralize the fiery effects of capsicum on the tender flesh of your fingers by occasionally dipping them in a one to five mixture of bleach and water. Here is what Soup Song has to say on the matter:

IF YOU'RE TOO STUBBORN TO WEAR RUBBER GLOVES WHEN YOU'RE CUTTING CHILES AND THEN JUSTIFIABLY WORRY ABOUT RUBBING YOUR EYES OR PERFORMING OTHER BODILY FUNCTIONS. And this goes double for people who wear contact lenses and have to take them out at some point. WELL, there really IS a bonafide solution here--and I do mean solution. Just get yourself a little bowl of clorox (bleach), diluted 5 parts water to 1 part bleach, and so long as you dip your fingers in from time to time you've got the problem licked. Why? Capsaicin compound is not soluble in water, but chlorine or ammonia turns it into a salt, which IS soluble in water. Please be advised, though, you should never soak your hands in this solution--that will compound the problem and cause burns. Just dip the fingers quickly. Alternatively, one reader advises that you can also protect your hands by coating them lightly with vegetable oil as a barrier--not as good as rubber gloves, but the same principle.

I just want to add here that Soup Song is one of my favorite web sites. Of course, I adore soup and generally make a pot of soup (or stew) once a week or so. Soup Song feels the same way I do about soup. They tackle everything soup related, from recipes to history to folklore and song.

Cool Running

So I started compiling my 101 Things in 1001 Days list (you can find it further down the page.) I've put "Run a 5K" on the list, but I don't really want to run in a race, just to be able to run 5K in one go. I found a training plan over at Cool Running and I'm going to try following it, starting in February. The only reason I'm not starting it now is because I've let my gym membership lapse for the month of January (the place is too full of New Year's Resolutionists for my likes) and it's too dark to run after work.

Just another Friday

I have the great fortune of having the sort of job that lets me listen to audio books while I work. I recently came across J.C. Hutchin's 7th Son Podcast Novel Trilogy and I'm really enjoying it so far. If you like Sci-Fi, do give it a whirl.

I haven't tried this yet, but someone has concocted a drink called Black Velvet, which is a mixture of Guinness and Champagne. Now, I'm a fan of both Guinness and Champagne, but at first glance, mixing them sounds like a way to ruin both. In fact, it sounds like something a desperate alcoholic might come up with the morning after a New Year's Eve party. But I've not tried it yet; I'll reserve judgement until such a time as I have.

Retsina

I just tried my first sip of the Greek wine Retsina, which is considered by some to be the "quintessential Mediterranean wine," while others describe it as being "sappy and turpentine like." I purchased the bottle back at the beginning of last summer, after I'd read a story in which two of the characters were sharing a bottle of Retsina on the patio of a restaurant somewhere in the Greek isles.

The young man who helped me find the bottle on the shelves of The Party Source said he thought it tasted like floor polish. With that thought in mind, the bottle has languished in my meager wine rack, unopened, for months. I only opened it tonight because I didn't stop at the grocery on my way home; I didn't realize I was otherwise out of wine.

Well, the salesman did it an injustice. I think it's quite delicious. I can detect the resinous flavor, but it's not overwhelming; otherwise it's full flavored and not very sweet, though I can't really describe it as dry, either.

From about.com on Retsina:

Retsina was born of the need to preserve and ship wines in pine-pitch sealed vessels. Ancient wines varied substantially in quality and tended to spoil. In efforts to avoid this, wines were often adulterated with exotic ingredients, from herbs to sea water. Due to the pine oils, Retsina was thought of as wood nymph tears, though how it was collected from those shy nymphs is not recorded.

I'll be serving this the next time I make a Greek meal.

License plates

I saw a Kentucky license plate today that read RVNCLW. It made me smile.

Has anyone else noticed that a couple of the Kentucky and Tennessee license plate designs seem to have a strand of DNA running through the center of the plate? I've been seeing it on the road for a while now and I thought the explanation would be an easy answer to find, but no such luck. Of course, the image probably represents curling smoke or some such thing, but it reminds me of DNA. I've no idea why the Kentucky and Tennessee plates both have the ghostly spirals, either. You'll probably have to click on the images to enlarge them in order to see what I'm talking about here. I'd love to hear theories.

Some days we don't learn anything new; we just find new questions to ask.

In other news, I'm pondering starting a 101 Things To Do in 1001 Days project on my own. But I'm going to take a nap first.

Googling shrews

In an otherwise uneventful day, I learned today that the little tree shrew has the highest brain to body mass ratio of any animal; greater than that of humans, dolphins or whales. I couldn't even begin to speculate as to why and none of the articles I read on the subject offered any explanation other than the fact that tree shrews have very tiny bodies.

I came by this tidbit of information via an interesting article in Scientific American which speculates whether whales are smarter than humans.

I also learned about Google's free 411 service - 1-800-GOOG-411. Now that's going to come in handy on the road.

Crock Pot Oatmeal

This is by far the best oatmeal I've ever made. I'm not really a big fan of oatmeal, but it's so darn good for the body, I keep trying to find ways of making it more interesting. I adapted this recipe from one in Vegetarian Times:

Crock Pot Oatmeal

• 1 3/4 cups steel cut oatmeal (not regular, instant or old fashioned please)
• 4 cups Silk Light Vanilla Soy Milk
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 cup unsweetened dried cranberries
• 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Combine all the ingredients in a crock pot and cook on high for about three hours. Don't let this cook too long; if it over-cooks it will become hard as a rock and inedible. Four hours in my crock pot was just a bit too long; it was on its way to petrifying.
2. Leftovers re-warm in the microwave just fine if you add a little water. I've been adding a handful of fresh blueberries too.

Note to self: treating the crock pot with cooking spray will speed clean up a great deal.

I am somewhat intrigued by the plans for the world's first vertical farm to be built in Las Vegas. On one hand, it doesn't strike me as being very ecologically friendly. Then again, water could be re-circulated and I suppose sunlight could be directed into the interior levels with a system of mirrors. The article doesn't provide those sorts of details except to say the design details would be worked out this year. I'd certainly visit it should I ever find myself in Vegas.

Hot Hot Hot

Yesterday I chopped up half of a Serrano chile for my Thai basil turkey, with no problems whatsoever. Tonight I chopped up the other half of the chile for some soup and I've managed to give my fingers a hot pepper burn.

Peppers contain capsaicinoids, most concentrated in the seeds and internal membranes, and these chemicals stimulate the pain and thermal receptors in nerve endings. Capsaicinoids are oil soluble, so once they've absorbed into the skin, they can't be washed away with soap and water. This is why one should always wear rubber gloves when chopping hot peppers, at least if you're me.

It's hard to imagine the fiery cuisines of India, Thailand, China and many other countries without the kick of chilies, but these hot peppers originated in the Americas and were introduced to Europe by Christopher Columbus himself. From there they soon spread to Africa and the Orient and became essential ingredients.

Shiny New Toys

I had to go into the office to cover for other people's mistakes on this rainy Sunday, but that was somewhat offset by the new toys I got today. My landlord was kind enough to replace my kitchen faucet with a brand new unit, complete with a sprayer. Yes, this did make me very happy. And I brought home a new pepper mill since the other one self-destructed.

I also purchased a small flat bed scanner today, primarily for scanning recipes from magazines important documents for archiving. The OCR program that came with the scanner works well and I managed to scan six small articles and save them to Google Docs in about an hour. It will go much faster once I'm more familiar with the software.

Then I made Thai food for lunch tomorrow: ground turkey with basil, coconut curried mushrooms and peas, and pickled green bean relish. Doesn't that sound good?

Hot Rocks

Hot Rocks is back on Discovery Science this week.

More About Squirrels and Oaks

I decided to do an "Urban Hike" today and walked around Eden Park, roughly following the route I mapped out a couple of days ago. It was quite a nice walk, but I find I really prefer trails to sidewalks. People drive too fast through the park and I found myself wanting to shake my tiny fist at them and shout at them to slow down. And get off my lawn.

I was still thinking about squirrels and oaks today, probably because I live in close proximity to both. When I took my laundry to the basement this morning (I have to go outside to do this) there was a squirrel chattering at me from the security of a hundred year old oak tree.

Every few years, oak trees produce a synchronized bumper crop of acorns, a process known as masting. The abundance of food for the squirrels in turn causes a furry population boom the following year; well fed squirrels produce more squirrel pups. In colonial times, when the forests were more extensive and less fragmented, this often led to huge mass migrations during September as the squirrels left the area in search of new territories. In 1803 Lewis and Clark witnessed one of these mass emigrations, noting squirrels swimming across the Ohio River. Lewis assumed they were moving south for the winter. Other historical records report masses of gray squirrels so dense that it would take a month for the army to pass through.

The following text was copied from this website, but I can't find the author's name, else I would attribute:

During modern times, squirrel emigrations have not been as spectacular because of the cutting and fragmentation of the vast hardwood forest does not normally allow the build up of the same size squirrel mess as previous eras. But in 1964, millions of squirrels emigrated from the north of Georgia to the south. "One squirrel was reported swimming across the Allatoona Reservoir and encountered a boat in his path. It didn’t stop him. He just ran up an oar, jumped in the boat, ran across the man in the boat, and jumped back into the water continued his swim south. Normally wild squirrels in the woods are scared of man but during migration they lose their normal fear.

In 1968, a migration of squirrels occurred in most of the eastern United States; Alabama, the Carolinas, Georgia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia. In New York, one hundred thousand drowned squirrels were pulled out of one reservoir. The number of squirrels killed by automobiles was a thousand times as high as usual. Some estimates of the squirrels number went as high as eighty million.

But this brightened up my day!

Fridays shouldn't feel like Mondays

I just returned from the doctor's office, having had a mole removed from my nose. I also had a dentist appointment on Wednesday, and I have to say I'm really tired of HAVING NEEDLES STABBED INTO MY POOR HEAD. My nose is bright white where the anaesthetic is still working; it looks like the beginning stages of frost bite. I'm feeling quite abused, so I'm having a lovely Terrapin Rye Pale Ale from Athens, GA, which was a gift from Heather and Chris. (Thanks! It's really hitting the spot tonight!)

And my pepper grinder just died. It really has been one of those days. How thoughtful of Bed, Bath and Beyond to put a 20% off anything coupon in my mailbox today.

So I'm going to write about squirrels instead of the trials and tribulations of this week. Squirrels and oak trees have a deeply intertwined relationship. Squirrels rely on oaks for food in the form of acorns and the oak trees depend on the squirrels forgetting about some of their cached nuts and in turn dispersing oak seedlings far and wide. Oak forests nearly always contain both red and white oak species. The white oak has an acorn which germinates in the fall, soon after if falls to the forest floor, whereas the red oak acorns germinate in the spring. Once an acorn germinates, its food value plummets for the squirrels, and the squirrels know this. They tend to bury the red oak acorns for eating in late winter and early spring, whereas they eat more white oak acorns fresh in the fall. They do cache white oak acorns as well though, but often before doing so, they bite into the acorn and remove the embryo. This prevents the acorns from germinating, preserving their food value for the squirrels. The embryos are not removed from red oak acorns before burying in the fall, but squirrels have been observed digging up red oak acorns in the early spring, removing the acorn embryo, then re-burying the acorn for later consumption. Clever, eh?

Morris Chairs and Paternosters

I came across a couple of unfamiliar terms in novels I've read recently and they demanded research.

In Fangland, there was mention of a paternoster located in an ancient hotel, which, judging from the description, was a cross between a dumbwaiter and an elevator. As it turns out, it is a constantly moving, open, cyclical elevator. It looks dangerous as hell if you ask me. See for yourself:

About this video: Invented in 1884 as the "cyclic elevator," the paternoster is an open-front continuously-moving elevator.
This example, one of the few still in operation, is in the Albert Sloman Library at the University of Essex.

Also over at YouTube is an excellent student video called Ups and Downs filmed using a paternoster.


The Morris Chair is far more benign; an early reclining chair designed in the 1860s in Sussex, England and marketed by the William Morris Company. They are prized as antiques and are still being produced today. In this picture you can see the adjustable back brace which allows for the angle of recline to be changed.

Map My Run

I've been playing around with a website I stumbled upon and it's fun. MapMyRun is a tool mostly for runners, but it's quite useful for dog walkers and hikers as well. Bascially, you pull up a map of the location you want to chart, put in your markers and the site calculates the distance. Pretty cool, eh?

I've included a map I whipped up (in about three minutes) of Eden Park. I'm not sure if the distance takes into account elevation or if it is "as the crow flies." To the FAQmobile, Robin!

Oh for crying out loud - a tornado warning? Now?

I think I'm entirely justified in feeling that I shouldn't have to worry about tornadoes in Ohio in January. Yet I just received a text message from my local news station telling me there is a tornado warning in effect until 4:00 AM. Pfft.

Carry Wine in Style

How to make a wine bottle carrier from a furoshiki (or a large square scarf.)

65 Degrees in January

I did not call in sick today, though it was awfully difficult not to with the weather being such a temptress. I managed to get out of the office once for a brisk walk in the parking lot (five times around the building equals one mile.) I left the office early and dashed over to Sharon Woods to get in a quick walk around the lake before dark. I was nearly caught speeding in my car past a park patrol officer, but slowed down in time to escape notice. Which is a good thing, because getting a speeding ticket for being in a hurry to take a walk would be really embarrassing.

Yesterday I cooked a nice casserole, which I brought for lunch today. I received the recipe in an email from Vegetarian Times. It's called Three Sisters Casserole (it needs a hot chili or two in the filling) and the name is derived from the staple Native American crops of corn (or maize), beans and squash. The corn was planted in a small mound and would serve as a living pole for the support of the bean vines while the squash grew at the base, its large leaves acting as living mulch to keep out weeds.

I never stopped to wonder why the corn I see in the Ohio fields these years is not as tall as the corn I saw on my way to school in the sixties and seventies. I had assumed it was the usual distortion of time and age, a product of me remembering the corn as taller than it actually was. But according to Bill Bryson, the corn grown today in the Midwest today is a shorter and better producing hybrid. I've never been to a corn maze, but I wonder if the farmers who create them grow the old ten foot tall varieties of corn especially for their labyrinths.

Forecast: Dreary

Winter seed heads
Originally uploaded by lilysecret42

It's amazing how much just getting outside can lift my spirits. I felt sluggish and kind of blue when I woke this morning, but I put on my backpack and boots, grabbed my camera and headed outside anyway. I walked about two and a half miles around Glenwood Gardens, got a few good snaps and was entirely revitalized by the time I got home.

Tonight I made Sunchokes, otherwise known as Jeruselum Artichokes for the first time. They are a knobbly tuber from a type of sunflower. They are hard to peel because of their irregular shape and though some websites advised not peeling them at all, I thought the skin was too unappealing to leave in place. So I boiled a pound of them in their skins for about 25 minutes until I could poke a fork in easily, let cool, peeled, sliced and put them in an oiled pie dish. Then I sprinkled them with a quarter cup of Parmesan cheese, dotted with butter and baked at 400 degrees for twenty minutes until the cheese was a bit browned.

They were really good; a lot like potato but with a faint artichoke flavor. I'll definitely bring them home again.

Sweeny Todd

I went to see Sweeny Todd today, finally. I thought it was excellent, with outstanding performances by both Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Who knew they could sing? The cinematography was just gorgeous. It was also exceptionally bloody and I had to watch many scenes through my fingers.

I remember my Mum telling me the story of Sweeny Todd when I was little, but I never knew the entire story. I decided to research that today and I found the Sweeny Todd was not a legend, which I had assumed, but a true series of events. There is a multi-chapter article detailing the strange case of Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street over at TruTV Crime Library and it's well worth reading.

ETA: Or Sweeny Todd is actually a fictional character. At least Wikipedia seems to think so. I need to do more research, but not tonight. Fact or fiction, it's still a great story.

Origami - practical applications

Today I learned how to close a chip bag without a clip or rubber band. Now that's useful.







But what is with that music?

Sailing? In January?

In the town of Beer, Devon, England
Originally uploaded by lilysecret42

I registered for a sailing class today! It will take place in May; with three hours classroom and three hours hands-on out at Brookville Lake. I'm very excited. I've wanted to learn something about sailing for years but the opportunity never presented itself.

I found the advert in Craig's List and made up my mind to take the class in about two minutes. I didn't know there was anyone offering classes locally. Hueston Woods has some rentals of little Sunfish, so I may actually get a chance to practice what I learn this summer.

Yes, what I really need is another expensive hobby.

What does one call the day after New Year's Day? Wednesday, I suppose...

Today was my first day back at the office after twelve days of vacation. It was 8 F / -13 C degrees outside and it had snowed overnight when I opened my eyes this morning. It took every shred of will power I possess to get dressed and head out into that weather. Calling in sick seemed like such a nice option.

I made a Swiss chard and goat cheese frittata (it was very good) for dinner tonight, and it got me thinking about why chard is called "Swiss" in this country. I did a couple of searches on it and found a couple of contradictory answers. All that was agreed upon was that it is not Swiss, but Mediterranean in origin. I came across a Fordhook variety of chard on the web though, and that got me thinking about Fordhook lima beans. I assumed there must be a connection and it turns out the Fordhook Farm, Doylestown, PA was owned by one W. Atlee Burpee, founder of the now famous Burpee Seed Company. The large, fat lima bean discovered and developed by Burpee sometime around 1900 still bears the name of the farm today (although they are called butter beans in the south.) So that's what I learned today, boys and girls.

Swiss chard is a nutritional powerhouse though; check out its fan page over at The World's Healthiest Foods.

Before I go to bed

The Good Luck Soup turned out to be all kinds of awesome. Yum. I made the following changes to the recipe:

• I sauteed the vegetables in olive oil until soft and beginning to brown, before adding the stock and the beans.
• I didn't have dried chilies so I used cayenne instead, about a teaspoon's worth.
• I certainly didn't add any extra salt - it was salty enough from the ham hock.

Note to self: your money is in stitches.

Happy New Year!

Brilliant fungi
Originally uploaded by lilysecret42

I photographed this lovely fungi last week while on a hike in the North Carolina Arboretum. According to Peterson's Field Guide to Mushrooms, it is called Witches' Butter (Tremella mesenterica.) It grows on wood throughout North America and is supposed to be edible, though I'm not inclined to try this one.

Right. That's what I learned today.

Happy New Year!
May you live well
Laugh often
Love much in 2008

ETA: I also learned that House Foods Tofu Steak is really not good. I'm rather fond of tofu but this was no winner.
I also learned that okra is really high in vitamin C. I had no idea.