Feb 29 - Advice

Here is a saying written by Thich Naht Hahn.  It says, "The tears I shed yesterday have become rain."  I look at it every day.

Feb 29 - Bought a House

Well, we are now the proud new owners of a house in Burtonsville, Maryland.  More details to follow when we move at the end of March.  We are now heading into a tough month.  Matt gets ankle surgery, I have a work schedule that is crazy, and we are moving.  I can only hope that maybe, by the end of April, our lives will be a bit more normal.

Feb 27-28 - Kimchee Pancakes

On Monday I worked for twelve hours straight.  By the end, all I wanted to do is play the ukulele.  The next day, I  had a mental health day.  Hooray for giving my poor brain a rest.

I made kimchee pancakes and they were so good.  Smelled to high heaven but geeze, they were tasty.  Why does that happen.  We ate them so fast I did not get a picture.  How do you make kimchee pancakes. Take kimchee, mix with flour and water and cook them like a pancake.  It was that simple.

Feb 25 - Girl Scout Cookies

The war on normal people by conservatives is now being waged on the Girl Scouts.  In case you have not heard, the Girl Scouts are a subversive organization that supports Planned Parenthood, abortion, homosexuality and the devil.  Go here and here.  There is actually a movement by conservative families to take their girls out of Girl Scouts and have them join the American Heritage Girls because they are pure. 

When I saw the Girl Scouts selling cookies, I bought some on principle.  Please do the same.  Picking on the Girl Scouts?  Really?  This is when you can see how the internet can destroy.  Let these unsubstantiated stories circulate and before you know it, those who cannot tell the difference between facts and rumor always believe the rumor.   Does this seem like the Salem witch hunt?  

Feb 24 - Friday Night out

Matt wanted to go and see the comedian, Jim Gaffigan.  Matt had heard him on the Sirius Comedy Channel and thought he was pretty funny.  I have to admit, I had never heard of Jim Gaffigan until Matt played some of his skits for me.  So I said, sure, why not, (my official life philosophy).

What was fascinating is that I really had no idea who this guy was.  No idea what he looked like, nothing.  And here was an entire theater of fans waiting with excitement.  It is an odd feeling to be among people when you do not share their common experience.  And he was popular.  He sold out three nights and I kept saying, who is this guy that he sells out three nights?  Well, clearly three theaters worth of people knew.

Well, he was funny.  Not I-am-going-to-pee-myself funny, but he was pretty good.  When he went into his Hot Pockets routine, the crowd went wild.  If you know who he is, I will assume you know what that means.  (To this day, I am still not sure why he is well known.)

Feb 23 - Ode to Mucinex

Matt and I have both been sick with some weird cold/sinus infection that will not go away.  If it were not for Mucinex, I do believe that my head would explode from the blob of snot that builds up in my poor sinuses.

I decided that I love the word "snot."  There is something so final  and short about it.  Snot Snot Snot  The other night as I was not sleeping, I started to focus on the dangling ball of snot in the back of my throat that was keeping my up all night.  And then I decided that "Dangling Ball of Snot" would be a great name for a band.

Feb 22 - Geico Pig

I love him!  I want to do everything with pin wheels now.  

Feb 21 - American Eats (Again)

Matt took me to America Eats for our belated Valentine's Day dinner. America Eats is a restaurant dedicated to traditional American food. I was determined to try the mock turtle soup, which they only serve on Tuesday and Wednesday and it is popular enough that the last time I went, they did not have it. (Boy, did I cause a fuss.) So we went early on a Tuesday and they had it.

What is mock turtle soup? Hold on to your hat but it has nothing to do with turtles. It is made by cooking a calves head to mimic turtle soup, which was no longer possible to make when turtle became endangered. The wikipedia recipe, which can be found by following the link above, begins like this:

"Take a large calf's head. Scald off the hair. Boil it until the horn is tender, then cut it into slices about the size of your finger, with as little lean as possible."

Yummy! (At this point in my life, I really am willing to eat just about anything but living bugs. I ate a grasshopper so I cannot say I would never eat a bug. I am drawing the line at squirming meal worms.)

As crazy as it sounds, it was delicious. It tasted a lot like oxtail stew. (Never had that? Ooo, you should try it. I make it every year in the winter. It is fabulous on a cold, snowy day.) Very rich, thick beef broth made with carrots and onions and probably some root vegetables like turnips. There were with lots of pieces of meat, some meatballs, and something that looked like an eyeball. Three floating white blobs. I ate one and then I asked the server what it was. Well, it was something as unexciting as a poached quail egg (you can see one there in the picture).

Does my husband love me or what?

Feb 20 - Movers

I am interviewing moving companies.  Our plan is to have them pack everything and move us.  Matt is having surgery on his ankle before we move and there is only so much one person can do in any given day.

We thought about all of the time it took us to pack our stuff and it is absolutely worth it to pay someone.  When the movers come to our apartment, which has about half of our stuff, they are blown away by the job.  The reality is that we have two bedrooms, two baths and two offices, plus a living room, kitchen and pantry.  It might as well be a house.  And let's admit it, we have a lot of stuff, even if it is just the stuff we have here.  Books, files, food, clothes (think about my closet full of coats).  That is a royal pain to pack and move.  Hilariously, these movers generally said they could get this done in a day.  Frankly, no way and if they did it, it would be a slap dash job.

Then we have the problem that our apartment is nine floors and one building away from the loading dock.  It is a long, long slog from here to the truck.  Only one mover was realistic about what it was going to take to pack us up and move us (three days) so we hired his company.  He could see the issues and I liked that.

Once we are moved, we then bring each pod to the house and empty those.  We might have it all done by the end of the summer.

Feb 19 - Letter to Mount Vernon

While we were in the Mount Vernon gift shop we noticed a book there that really got me agitated.  The letter I wrote to the President of Mount Vernon will explain why.  (I hope you all remember my lessons on federalism.)  I have decided it is time to stand up for the true meaning of federalism.  I will not allow revisionist history to go by without comment.

____________________________

Dear Mr. Rees:

I am writing in regard to a book that my husband and I found in the Mount Vernon gift shop that we found quite offensive.  The title of the book is "Hamilton's Curse:  How Jefferson's Arch Enemy Betrayed the American Revolution--and What it Means for Americans Today," by Thomas DiLorenzo.  You can image in our shock at seeing such a politically oriented book at Mount Vernon. (Ron Paul recommended it.) More importantly, as you most assuredly know, Washington was a federalist who agreed with and was a compatriot of Hamilton.  Jefferson did not agree but alas, he did not win that argument no matter how hard the Tea Party/conservatives would like to make that case.  

The author Mr. Di Lorenzo appears to be a mirror image of  Ann Coulter on the history front. (He also appears to favor colons in his book titles.) He has written such tomes as "Lincoln Unmasked: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe," "From Pathology to Politics: Public Health in America," How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold Story of our Country from the Pilgrims to the Present," and "The Food and Drink Police:  America's Nannies, Busybodies, and Petty Tyrants."  This does not appear to be the type on author one would want to have associated with Mount Vernon.

We spoke with the manager on duty who said he would speak to the book buyer.  He encouraged me to contact her but I decided that rather than contacting her, I would contact you because of my more pertinent question, and one I know that the Ford's Theater and Museum faces.  How do you select books for Mount Vernon?  This one should never have slipped through. It is an obvious partisan book with little if any historical relevance.  

Thank you for your time.

Feb 18 Part II - The Air Force Memorial

This is my brand new favorite monument in Washington.  Located in Arlington, near the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery, the Air Force Memorial is an inspiring structure and engineering feat.

There are three steel curved spires that rise 270 feet into the sky, inspired by jet trails.

 

(Clear screen with etchings of jets)

(Shot from behind clear screen at wall memorial above)

The most amazing part of this memorial is the engineering behind it.  As you can imagine the spires would be impacted by winds.  In order to dissipate the action of wind, there are dampers in each spire made of a box with a giant ball inside that moves as the spire moves.  This movement acts to dampen or counter the the movement of the spire. (They do the same thing with skyscrapers.)  It is a true engineering feat and I am not doing near justice to the physics involved.  Here is what a Penn State newsletter says:


Wind resistance was a significant challenge in the design of the tall spires.  Initial wind-tunnel tests conducted on scale models of the spires verified that they were susceptible to structural failure due to wind conditions that could cause resonance, or “galloping”.  To mitigate such swaying, the structural engineering team used a series of sway control mechanisms within each spire.  Each mechanism consists of an octagonal stainless steel box lined with a synthetic dampening material (Sorbothane) and houses a  20 in. dia., 2,000-pound lead ball.  When the spires begin to sway, the free-rolling lead balls hit the dampening material on the sides of the box, which absorb the energy and help to reduce the swaying effect.

I bet you had no idea you would learn physics in this blog.  Anyway, the best thing about the location is that you can see a lot of Washington quite clearly.

Feb 18th - Washington Birthday

We went to Mount Vernon to wish General Washington a happy birthday.  With a huzzah, we sang the correct version of Yankee Doodle Dandy.  It goes as follows:

There goes General Washington
Riding on his stallion
Giving orders to his men,
there must have been a million.

George explained that the first verse was actually insulting to him because a "macaroni" was a poser and a fop.  So we never want to suggest he was a macaroni.

We walked down to the wharf, which I had never done.  Of course, Mount Vernon is on the Potomac and on a gorgeous part of it too.  The river is wide here and not much development is visible from the grounds.

We also took a look at his tomb.

But the most important moment of the day was for us to personally give our good wishes to the General.   This guy was really a very good actor.  I mentioned that we had recently been to his old Fort Necessity. He remembered it fondly but alas, his surrender to the French, where he admitted to the ambush of Jumonville, occurred on July 4th so, Washington told us, that day always gave him mixed emotions.  Here is Matt posing with his hero.

Feb 17 - Riding the Train

I took the train to New York today for work. An up and back commute.   I do love riding the train.  I wish I could rely on it for more of my travels.  So relaxing.  So not an airplane.

Feb 16 - Sauerkraut Emergency!

We had a sauerkraut emergency and I had to make an emergency run to the grocery store.  You simply cannot eat weisswurst without Bubbie's sauerkraut.  If you have not had this, you must, nay I insist, you try this stuff.  It is not like any sauerkraut you have ever tasted in your life.  

Feb 15 - Lykke Li and Music

I am constantly searching for new music.  In order to do so, I delve into what I call popular culture.  I have satellite redio in my car and I tune into the college station, and then the new music station and I try mightily not to turn it off.  It is not easy.  I am not really a country music person so that genre is out.  I find rap/hip hop/ whatever annoying so sorry Kanye, I'm just not into you.

Then there is everything else.  Music is so broken down into so many categories that it is hard to follow.  But for me, most of it falls into the  uninteresting music category.  I recently read an essay by a critic who noted that today's music has a very consensus/non-confrontational quality.  Post 9-11 music is soothing, in a Prozac sort of way.  I agree.  It is like these young musicians (in their 20's) need the world to be a feather pillow.  The music is not necessarily happy but it is not sad either.  It just is.  It is folky, singer songwriter stuff but it does not say too much one way or another.  It is all softness and lightness and Lord knows it seems like the ability to sing is not really valued.  I have heard a lot of really bad singing.

Then a lot of the music is a sort of been there, done that kind of thing.  For example, I was not all that into Amy Winehouse.  If I want to hear retro 60's music, I'll listen to my old 45s.  I don't need a retread without any new interpretation.  (I guess the re-interpretation was the drug lyrics.)  Everyone went gaga over the Arctic Monkeys but weren't they just the Animals redux?  And do not get me started on Cold Play. The successor to U2?  Oh please. They are not even in the same universe.

Anyway, I search and search and every once in a while I find something intriguing.  Right now, it is Lykke Li, the Swedish songstress with the wispy voice and the arty feel to her music.  Her first recording, Youth Novels is good but it is her second, Wounded Rhymes that we listen to a lot.  It has a retro 60's feel, absolutely, but then she takes it to a different place.  It is layered and complex.  It is singable.  The music is varied (i.e., every song sounds different).  So I offer that to anyone who needs something new.

We also like Florence and the Machine, but I prefer her first recording, Lungs, to her second, Ceremonials  (too repetitive and overproduced.  Matt disagrees.)

And as always, give me Afro-beat any day of the week.  They still play horns.

Feb 14 - Valentines Day

How did we spend Valentine's Day?  I am not a big fan of these kinds of holidays but I think it is important to be reminded that you should tell someone you love that you do love them and appreciate them.  I did that by going with Matt to the doctor to discuss his poor feet and then making a nice dinner (rabbit).  We are going out to dinner on another non-holiday night.

Feb 13 - Swimming

I have not been swimming regularly for various reasons and I miss it.  I went today and I just felt so powerful and strong.  I swam a mile and a quarter in under an hour.  For me, that is pretty good.  I am not the fastest swimmer in the world.  No triathlons for me.  But I think if I put my mind to it, I could swim far.

Feb 11 - 12- Snow?!

Okay, it was a dusting.  I made French onion soup in its honor. For me, a nice warm soup is winter food.   I started to think about living in a place where it never gets cold. Do people in Southern CAlifornia crave French Onion soup?  How about Florida?  I don't know that I would.  Too warm too heavy for a non-winter day.

It was a lazy weekend and we did not go anywhere or do anything.  We like it that way sometimes.

Feb 10 Key Ring Charms

My key ring is turning into a sort of charm bracelet.  Here is what it looks like:

What you see are trinkets.  The beaded flower is by an Alaska Native from Fort Yukon.  The blue tassel is made in Turkey.  I have never been there but the pharmacy is owned by a Turkish couple and she is always bringing in stuff to sell.  The yellow beads is a good luck charm given to us by our tour guide in Bhutan.  The green Buddha is from an Asian store here in DC and just makes me happy.  I had a purple Ganesha but he broke.  This thing is getting cumbersome but it jingles and I find it fun.

Feb 9 - House Inspection

It went well.  I think we are on our way!

Feb 8 - Treadmill ADD

I have developed treadmill ADD.  It is the oddest sensation but after about five minutes on a treadmill I start to get really distracted to the point that I cannot focus and I want to jump off.  And I mean literally jump.  I often find myself grabbing the handles and jumping my feet to the sides to stop for a moment.  Nothing seems to help.  Listening to music, watching television.  I thought that it was because there are so many people in the fitness room now that it is January and all those people distract me.  But I am doing it even when I am alone so it is me.  I am not sure why but I am going to kill myself if I keep this up.  New resolution, no more treadmill.  If I want to walk or run, outside I go.

I have also experienced elliptical knees.  For anyone who has used an elliptical and wondered why your knees hurt, apparently there is just such a condition.  Some people just cannot exercise on an elliptical.  There are different kinds of elliptical trainers.  I can use an arc trainer which tends to be a circular gliding motion.  I cannot use the other type, which is more like a modified step machine, for more than ten or fifteen minutes without getting irritated knees and calves.

Feb 8 - Will it ever snow?

No.

Feb 6 - The Day

I went with Matt to see an orthopedic surgeon to discuss the tear in Matt's ankle tendon.  He has been struggling with two bad feet and he needs to get them fixed, one at a time.  The consensus is, time to apply the scalpel.

For dinner I cooked Branzini, which is the Mediterranean sea bass.  We decided we did not like it.  It was really fishy.  That does not usually bother me, but this was almost overpowering.

Feb 5 - Cooking

I spent the day cooking.  I made meatballs, I preserved lemons, then I made a lamb curry (pictured above).

Feb 4 - Herman Melville

I have decided to dive into Herman Melville.  You remember him as the author of Moby Dick.  Yes, we all struggled with that dreaded novel in high school.  But as we mature, writing takes on a different character.  So I have decided to try again.  I am starting with Typee and Omoo, both fictional accounts of the South Pacific based on his time working on a whaling ship.  Then on to Moby Dick.  I'll report back when I have finished Typee but so far, I am loving it.

February 3 - The Ninth Amendment

<=  (marsha's very worn out pocket Constitution)

Lesson Time:

Stephen Colbert interviewed Lawrence Tribe, the constitutional law scholar from Harvard (we all had to read his book in law school).  He had both Obama and Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts as students.  He said that Obama learned well.  Roberts, not so much.  Amen brother.

But more importantly, Colbert asked Tribe to name his favorite constitutional amendment.  He said the Ninth Amendment.  That puzzled me.  There are a lot of amendments and I surely do not know them all.  But that is one of the original ten and I was not familiar with it.  Colbert really did not follow up to ask what it meant.  So I looked it up.  Here is what is says:

"The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Let's think about this for a moment.  This pretty much repudiates every argument over, for example, abortion, which is based on the right to privacy.  The argument usually  made is that the Constitution does not recognize a right to privacy.  It was implied by the Court.  Guess what?  The Ninth Amendment says, so what!  The Court can recognize other rights that are not necessarily enumerated if we have them  as people.  I think that we can all agree that we have an inherent right to privacy.  I think we can all agree that we have an inherent right to control decisions made concerning our own body.  If that is the case, the Ninth Amendment protects it and this futile search for the original meaning of the Constitution is pointless.  Just because it isn't expressly there does not mean it does not exist if we, as human beings, have rights not mentioned.

If there is anyone reading this who does not really know what I am getting at, here is the deal.  The conservatives on the Supreme Court consider themselves "originalists."  This means they want to look to the original intentions and meanings of the drafters.  They do not consider the Constitution a living and evolving document that needs to be read in accordance with the modern world.  This leds to the absurd notion that since the Constitution does not mention the internet, then it must not to be covered.  You see what I mean?  They refuse to expand it out to situations that the original drafters never intended or even imagined.  Well, how could they intend to cover things that had not been thought of?

Even worse, good luck trying to figure out the original meaning.  There were many drafters and they disagreed with each other.  They intentionally left the document general and kind of vague. They wrote the Federalist Papers to explain it. But that book of essays is a dialogue between two sides who wanted to assuage their own group-- the state's rights believers who lost on all fronts when the Articles of Confederation were tossed on the trash heap, and the federalists who wanted a strong central government (tea party propaganda nothwithstanding).

So this is my Huzzah to the Ninth Amendment.  We need to hear more about it.

February 1 - Mindless Activity

Matt went out of town and I got to have a quiet evening at home with the cats.

It has been so long since I have had the opportunity to sit in silence and do what I call mindless activity.  It is not really mindless.  It is actually more of zen mindfulness.  I have a pair of pants that I needed to alter.  So I sat down at the sewing machine and worked on it.  That is all I did.  No multi-tasking.  I just focused on figuring out how to fix the pants.  I focused on the problem and nothing else.  I focused on the thread and the needle and the fabric.  So while I was actually doing something and not sitting quietly, I would still qualify this as meditation because the mind was focused.  Whether it is focused on breathing or on sewing, the point is focus so the mind is calmed.

January 31 - Aruba

It was a gorgeous day and I rode my bike to the physical therapy office. (My elbow is suffering computer related injuries.)

We had planned on going to Hawaii in March.  Marriott sucked us into this deal to visit their vacation time share resorts.  But things just are not going to work out.  We have to move at the end of March and Matt may need surgery on his ankle for a torn tendon (no dancing this year).

So we rescheduled the vacation with Marriott.  We have to take it.  They have our money.  We decided to go to Aruba after we move to relax a bit.  Hopefully Matt's ankle will also be on the mend by then.

January 29 - Chinese New Year

In this auspicious year of the dragon, we went to the Chinese New Year celebration in DC today.  It was a gorgeous day but we dithered and we missed the parade.  We did however see the dragons and lions dancing for the crowd.  The big event comes at the end when they light the firecrackers.  It is the year 4709 in the Chinese calendar.  There is a  firecracker for every year and they are all tied onto a long string.  That means a lot of firecrackers have to go off.   In years past, they hoisted them up into the air with a crane.  But the string got too long for that to work.  So they had them arrayed on the ground and although we were close enough to hear them and to be engulfed in smoke, we could not really see them.

When this celebration started years ago, this actually was Chinatown.  However, most residents and stores have long since moved to the suburbs.  There is a mall in Gaithersburg that has its own celebration for the local community.  In the face of decline, Chinatown was redeveloped with the building of a new arena.  This chased out whatever mom and pop Chinese restaurants and shops were left and now it is just a bunch of chains and rowdy young people roaming the streets with too much time on their hands and too much interest in shoplifting and pickpocketing.  But they still call it Chinatown and there are Chinese letters on the street signs, despite the lack of actual Chinese people or businesses, and it is the location of the Chinese gate, a gift from the Peoples Republic.   Here are some pics.

Performing for the dignitaries.

The dragons taunt the firecrackers.

These guys were really good.  They were jumping up in the air and rolling on the ground.  The girls playing the percussion were awesome too.  

HAPPY YEAR OF THE DRAGON!  

January 28 - What we did today

What a glorious day it was.  We did not shop for houses.  Now all we need to do is plan the move and we are out of here.

January 25-27 Bought the house

We spent three days negotiating a contract and we finally agreed on Friday night.  If all goes well, we are moving to Burtonsville. Suburbia here we come.  For the first time since I have lived in DC, I will not be within walking distance of the metro.  I have lived as far as two miles out from a train, but this place is much further, about fifteen minutes to Silver Spring by car.  There is no walking option and I do not plan on learning the bus schedule.

January 24 - Statues

They are putting up a statue of Mario Lemieux at the new arena in Pittsburgh.  Listen, I love Mario and I think he deserves a statue.  But I am not sure I believe in putting up statues to living people.  It seems to me we should wait for a person's demise to deem them statue worthy, so we can assess the entire life, not just a piece of it.

In D.C. there is an informal rule that you never name buildings after a living person.  The Repubs broke the rule.  First, they renamed National Airport as Reagan National Airport.  (I never call it that.)  I think there were a few reasons for it.  One idea was that he had Alzheimer's disease and it was like he was dead.  Another was that  they wanted him to know how much they appreciated him before he died. They also named a huge government building after him and it was all downhill from there.

 There are places named after several living Bushes, the Kennedys, of course, Robert Byrd had no problem with things being named after him, or even the king of pork, and now deceased, John Murtha, who liked to name things after himself.

But for me, that honor needs to be reserved for the departed who we admire and love.

If you really want to get into controversy, they are planning a memorial to Dwight Eisenhower and the proposal is to have a statue of him as a boy.  People are absolutely fuming including his family!  He was a four star general and a president and he will be depicted as a Kansas boy.  The artists who are creating the memorial have their reasons--it shows his humble beginnings and what he came from.  But come on.  If he deserves a statue, make it one of the man we admire, not some younger self that has no connection to our memories.  And isn't memories what it is all about?

Does this mean we need to have a statue of Mario Lemieux playing pee wee hockey?  Sounds ridiculous right.  So too for Eisenhower.

January 21-22 We found a House???!!!

Well, our search may be over.  We may have found a house.  It is a big house with a 1/2 acre to go with it. No homeowners association.  The house is immaculate and in a nice neighborhood.