Maebius Musing

An interesting pictoral randomness, I discovered over at “Bringing Up Salamanders“.

Here’s my mosaic, organized as you would read text, top left -> -> bottom right.

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Type your answer to each question below, into Flickr Search

2. Using only the first page of results, pick one image.

3. Copy & paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a mosaic of the picture answers.

THE QUESTIONS:

1. What is your real christian/first name?

2. What is your favourite food - right now?

3. What school did you go to?

4. What is your favourite colour?

5. Who is your latest celebrity crush?

6. What is your favourite drink?

7. What is your dream vacation destination?

8. What is your favourite dessert?

9. What do you want to be when you grow up?

10. What do you love most in life?

11. What is one word that describes you now?

12. What is your Flickr/Blog name?

Here are the image credits:

1. Nathan Fillion @ the Flanvention, 2. frozen taco, 3. Non-Active, 4. Emerald Green Thigh Highs., 5. feliciaday, 6. innocent pure fruit smoothie 3, 7. Dolphin Bay Esperance, 8. Ice cream, 9. This is the forest primeval., 10. Tammy’s bowls of light., 11. a puckish whistle12. Not available

I tag, anyone who reads this… 

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Related as a followup to this post right here.

I had planned to go a full 2 weeks with only checking online for work-related emails, and friend-related messages.  No other blogsurfing, no online gaming, nothing beyond quick scans and email replies to my close real-life contacts (who mostly also read this blog).

I broke my intarweb exile a two days early, mostly because I actually stopped looking at all my blogs and felt a pretty solid down-shift from the stress of “gotta check my email, gotta check my blogfeed, gotta check something else.  ZOMG I’m bored, lets surf the web for random shit“.

Honestly, I’ve read about “those people” and realized I’d started to become one.   Before leaving work, refresh feed reader after JUST refreshing it 2 minutes ago, froth at mouth, rinse, repeat….  Life is NOT that important to stay glued to my monitor, and I’m glad I did it.

I took a solid week and a half off from world of Warcraft and actually miss it, or, certain parts of it.   I found I missed the social aspect, chatting with some hilarious officers in my guild, being particularly punny with my Troll Nookni, and making bags free for the new alts we have in the guild.    That’s a huge reason I only recently hit max level on only one character after 3 years. I don’t play to kill things and quest. I play to network and RP after work.
What I did NOT miss was some other officers bailing because “Their Healer” was offline for over week and thus they wanted a better chance at seeing bosses die in instances.   Not a slam against them really, but I wish them well in their new home.  Dudes, just say you were looking around for progression, don’t just “Screw this I’m outa here!” in the middle of the week, M’Kay?  I won’t miss them much if they were truly relying on my character to make their gameplay fun.  That’s a good lesson from disconnecting….Perspective!

I also enjoyed a bit more time at home, just doing stuff with the family.   We went camping at Watkin’s Glen (beautiful!!), we gardened a bit, and I helped the sprog play LEGO Indiana Jones on PS2, or random imagination-games in his room.  I didn’t feel really rushed to bedtime, like I sometimes was.  I’ll admit, some nights if work was stressful, I jsut wanted to come home, put kid to bed and play online, not just WoW but random blogg-feeding.  It surprised me the selfishness that implied, and I’m glad for the escape from that escapism this week.

So, for now, I’m limiteing my online time to work for blog-reading, and two hours at night for home-computer.  If It’s Warcraft, that’s cool.  If I want to fiddle with other stuff like this cool online hand-drum lesson site?  Thats’ cool too.

The main lesson I took away from this experiement is I was overstretching my attention.  Started to feel crushed by “I didn’t read XYZ yet tonight?!?!”

and more importantly…..32 days until Starwood!

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Recent emails discussing blogging, and such have supplied us with today’s tag-meme, and thus, my answers below.

What books do you read when you’re happy?

Hmm, hard to pin down a specific book, sine if I am happy it is most likely because I’m reading something new and fresh and exciting. Usually fantasy (such as Susan Cooper, Ursula LeGuin, Diane Duane, or Neil Gaiman… not “Dragonlance” or other high-fantasy stuff) or Sci-Fi type books. Fiction with a healthy dose of either philosophical underpinnings, or a pseudo-spirituality/mythology behind them. Currently reading the Chronicles of Narnia (Prince Caspian) to my son at night.

What books do you read when you’re sad?

Similar to the happy books, though when I am sad I generally do not read much.  If I do it is lighter fare, such as the ever-popular “So you want to be a wizard” books, or “Wizard of EarthSea”.  Also, huge fan of William Sleator for quick pick-me-ups.

What were your favorite childhood books?

Hmm, already mentioned, before I read this question.  William Sleator (”Interstellar Pig“, “House of Stairs” and “Singularity“) definitely, as well as Diane Duane’s “Young wizards” series.  These, plus “The Dark is Rising” series(no, NOT the stupid modern ‘Seeker‘ movie) formed a big part of my worldview.

What’s your i-die-tomorrow meal?

Hmm, really tough call.  Honestly, as I think about this, it really depends on the season.  In summery months, I would eat Herb Chicken Pasta or honey-mushroom chicken every other night.  (herby chicken breast, over alfredo sauce, peas, and penne)…(chicken breast coated with a gloppy mess of honey, mushrooms, mustard, worchestershire, whatever else is handy, and topped with melted swiss cheese)

In winter, I die for rooty stews with Burdock, carrot, and anything Thai-curry.

What’s your guilty food pleasure?

Hmm, either a fair trade organic dark chocolate with cran/blueberry bits, or of course…Pomegranate Powah.
What’s your guilty tv/movie pleasure?

For TV, probaby a toss up between “So You Think You Can Dance“,  or  “House“.   For movies, I’m still a sucker for “5th Element” and “Tank Girl”, though also could watch “Titanic” again (which I saw over 4 times in theatre) if I have to mention a guilty secret movie. 

Ok, tagging everyone who reads this.     Go!

-Me

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I have a full-moon post in draft, honest. It concerns navel-gazing and friend-visits. It’s just still stuck in outline form and needs fleshing out, which is tough at work this week due to being the only one in the office (coworker vacation FTL)…. so, in no particular order a few mini-posts glommed together over the course of this week:

We have four new pets in the house, who look surprisingly like Mitosis. (brought in after their nest got lawn-mowed and fur-poofed.) They are SOOO CUTE! Will get pictures ASAP.

I am really enjoying “World of Warcraft” again. Apparently, I am getting a reputation as a darn-good healer even with quasi-crappy gear, and am starting to get randomly spammed invites to lvl 70 instances when I am online. Just dinged lvl 68. Also, Kanandi’s guild-mastering is getting much easier, since we now have a stable core of active people, and officers got clearly defined roles. Our casual nature made me frown upon seeming authoritative, but once I hammered out some basic outlines of what I needed people to handle, they offered to help and there was a sudden, blessed, synergy. It just works now, with little administrative crap to deal with. This frees me up to random-group heal. (Fact that a call for donations to upgrade our guild-bank resulted in 1,200 gold being donated over one week says a LOT for the loyalty and cooperation of my guild, with only three of our members at lvl 65+)

I completely rearranged my buttons, made a few simple macros, and such for my hunter, Nookni. While he is still stuck in Azeroth, I used the techniques and habits I got into with Kanandi-healing to put the most commonly used abilities on the same keys. This suddenly made using my hunter to farm and grind XP a whole exponential-level easier. Not sure why I didn’t do it before, but suddenly, it’s FUN to play the [solo] hunter again, and the lack of fun is why my prist is lvl 68 after my hunter of ~3 years is only lvl 55.

Also, just felt to need to brag that I was fighting a group of 4 demons a level below me, and managed to chain-trap one of them FOUR times, kept the crab off-tanking one, and proceeded to kite the other two with spams of wingclip, concussive shot, and WyvrenSting. Oh yeah, I was awesome! (drained mana pretty well, but only got hit a few times and was still at 90% health! I coulda taken 5!) I had never, ever done something like that so efficiently before. WoooHOO!

In other news, the garden has some tiny sprouts visible now, the seed-trays are going outside this weekend, and I hope to string-out my labyrinth on Sunday or Monday so we can begin officially hauling piles of poop to outline it. I was somewhat holding off in hopes of borrowing a roller to flatten and properly prepare the site, but recent walks around the area seem to lean me towards keeping it as-is. Might have better ‘natural resonance’ that way?

The hops bine[sic] is climbing steadily up the tree-post and is about level with my shoulder now, for those of you keeping track.

I have this sudden general sense of anti-ennui regarding my life. Nothing I can put my finger on, or point to other than the weather getting warmer, getting more stubborn in making my son go to bed ON TIME, and work being busy enough to keep me occupied, yet not overly stressful. Busy, yes, but hectic, less so.

A recent visit from friends of ours (who is an engineer) showed that a bit more structure might not be a bad thing. Doug almost wants to go to bed, and is fussing less and less now at night, so we might be over the initial hump of being firmly “Do it, now…because we said….now”. (more on this with up coming Moon-post).

That’s all for now…

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Two friends and I are engaged in a fun Iron Chef challenge, using Artichokes as our secret ingredient.

See my blogroll (Kwitchery, andalso Nettle’s Blog) for details and updates.

My own entries, are all cold dishes, making a subtle nod the Northern regions we live in (relatively speaking). Simple picnic fare mostly, representing the humble joy of country life, and it’s casual connection to nature, yet still holding within it’s myriad ingredients a mirroring of the complex web of life. Each dish is topped with a fresh violet, symbolizing the spring season, and offering a token of friendship towards this chef’s lovely challengers. (Sound sufficiently Asian/esoteric?!?!)

-=- Appetizer -=-

First, we have a Artichoke Pâté, served on a bed of fresh Romaine leaves, surrounded by various multi-grain crackers and pita slivers. Garnished with a fresh violet leaf and flower. Recipe was mostly followed, with some minor adjustments in terms of slightly less olives, slightly more garlic, and a touch of cilantro-sprout to bulk out a slightly insufficient quantity of Parsley.

* 15oz artichoke-hearts, drained
* 4oz low-fat cream cheese
* 1/3 cup grated parm cheese
* around 3 Tbls fat-free mayo
* 1.5 tsp minced garlic
* 1-2 tsp lemon juice
* 2 Tbls finely chopped parsley
* 2 Tbls finely chopped black olives
* 2 Tbls chopped, roasted red peppers
* Salt and Cayenne pepper, to taste
Process the heck out of all ingredients, then leave in fridge for a while to let flavors blend. (will it blend? Yes!) Serve with starchy/firm accoutrements like crackers, breads, or melba toasts.
The taste was pleasingly subtle, with the initial tartness of the peppers, lemon, garlic, and artichokes offset by the cooling firmness of the cream cheese.

-=- Main course -=-

Artichoke pasta salad with grilled chicken. Grilled chicken tenders, marinated in artichoke juice & minced garlic, rubbed prior to grilling with a mix of paprika, oregano, salt and pepper. Served on a nest of linguine pasta tossed with more artichokes, black olives, peppers, olive oil, and cider vinegar, plus the seasoning mix used on the chicken, atop a plate of fresh romaine lettuce leaves. Served cold, except for the chicken, which was added at the last moment steaming hot off the grill.

While using similar ingredients to the appetizer, this meal was quite tasty. More tangy and very full of marinated artichoke flavor. The kid loved this a lot, especially due to “slurpy noodle” potential.

-=- Dessert -=-

I had planned to make an artichoke-based ice-cream (since EVERY japanese recipe seems to involve some sort of frozen treat using almost any ingredient you can imagine), but ran out of time to prepare it again, as the initial attempt did not work right. More of a sorbet, I rinsed marinated artichoke hearts to remove most traces of the vinegar and oil, and pureed them until smooth. Then I added about a quarter cup of table-sugar and some more water (less sweetness than traditional European Sorbets, more like Asian “green tea ice-cream” in palate).

Unfortunately, the making of good sorbet requires a constant freeze/mix cycle that I was unable to work into our schedule properly, and am not submitting without a proper consistency and last-minute tweaks of recipe to ensure a quality entry. My initial result either froze solid and needed quite a lot of blending/refreezing, or started to separate a bit and freeze mostly sugar-water on the top of a denser artichoke-dust.

While this entry may sound rather off-putting, it was not too bad by my initial test. The artichokes, once rinsed, became more of a binding agent than a flavor, and added merely a slight subtle ‘greenish-bitter’ taste to the otherwise sweet frozen sensation. I think removal of a bit more vinegar, or using fresh artichokes blanched/boiled, then powdered, might work better. Still nothing earth-shatteringly well received, but a unique dessert which does compliment the other two dishes in flavor.

Summary, the initial sweeter appetizer, with crunchy crackers, followed by a more hearty and savory-salad made for a fairly well-rounded meal. While the desert course was initially unsuccessful, it was mostly due to time and technique rather than a failure of ingredients, and got a head-shaking (semi-sarcastic) bonus point for creativity and risk-taking.

Bon Appétit!

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