Maebius Musing

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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I found this little quiz through a new blog I’m reading, and thought I’d post the results.

As always, I encourage readers to view these statistics with a rather large bowl of salt (ie: a bunch of grains!) since many questions are phrased in a somewhat both/and way yet still require an Either/Or answer, so I had to pick one. A better more accurate representation of my thoughts would require essay-type questions and a real-life moderator picking through my results….even then it might be slanted due to moderator bias. *grin*

Here you go.

My Pagan Practice

Pagan Faith Practices Survey created by Otherworld Apothecary

I was actually somewhat surprised that the “New Age” correspondences scored slightly lower than my “Ceremonial” practices. I tend to think of myself as fairly distanced from Ceremonial types, which may have been due to some bad experiences in the past while still forming my proto-pagan spirituality. (Today, I could meet those types on much better footing.)

Still, the quiz was fun and gave me a chance to pause and reflect on a few things. I also got to look up and research my own musings on this topic.
(see here, or here.)

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This is generally a short musing for now, since I am recovering from a fun and guest-filled Easter weekend, and my co-worker is expecting his third child in about….now. (Actually, his wife has not given birth yet, but the due date is here and she’s starting feel initial contractions, so this week is expected to see me here alone at work)

However, my musing for the day is one I’d like to see comments and engage in a hearty discussion with someone on. Mostly for the somewhat belittling humor I initially felt when reading the linked article, and how it reflects my own archaeological paradigm.

Question: Given a set of data-points and artifacts which appear to deviate from the local norm, construct a reasoned hypothesis to explain their existence in relation to historically localized phenomena.

http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/104631-tunguska_meteorite-0

Putting aside my own “rational” thoughts on the Tunguska incident, the article linked above is quite interesting.

Not just because it seems highly implausible to my worldview and my own understanding of the reported ‘facts’, but in terms of the potential propaganda-slant this takes, and it’s ability to be read in terms of being myth.

On one hand, the article may be taking some unusual objects and applying a non-mainstream scientific viewpoint to explain it. If that is the case, it is simply a misguided attempt to delude the local population in the area.

However, what’s the harm in the story, if it is at least superficially plausable? Will the locals there sleep any worse thinking that instead of some random rock almost destroying their landscape, a sentient being helped save their landscape? Isn’t that the root of what religions do? Unite a culture with common mythology, in order to better the community? (controlling-the-community trends of organized religion aside).

Interesting thought….and one I’m going to ponder over the next day or so.

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