Baking, Blogging, and Blue Sky

I just finished two batches of cookies. Unfortunately my batch of all-purpose flour (one of two  canisters I had lying around) for the chocolate chip cookies was bad. So they went in the trash. The ginger cookies were absolutely phenominal though. (I left the cloves out.) I thought about bringing them into work to share, but I might not let them out of my sight. Gourmet magazine just posted their favorite cookies from the December issue of Gourmet from 1941 to the present and I found a group of bloggers who are making 12 of the cookies from that list in 12 days (and blogging about them with pictures and reviews). The instigator of this event is apparently Andrea. I had regularly been reading the blog of one of the contributors (Sass and Veracity) and came across this baking bonanza. After looking through all of the first four days cookies and reviews I was overcome with a longing for soft, chewy ginger cookies...which I then made. 

I have a long list of things to blog about, but find that everytime I sit down to post it takes me over an hour. And to be honest, I'd rather be making bagels. So instead I don't blog. But I am keeping a list of things to blog.  Right now the list is Yogurt, Smores Souffle, Switzerland, and Bagels. In particular Montreal bagels because they are the best. (Please don't send hate mail!) So those are coming. But it might be Christmas before they get posted. Also my digital camera has appeared to die, so I can't photograph my culinary attempts which makes them more boring. I will take it to Liz at Christmas, however, and she will touch it and then it will work. (This really did work on a former digital camera of mine. She apparently has a touch for electronics.) 

But onto why I really posted today. I read a liberal blog (perhaps mentioned here before) called Progressive Alaska. Philip Munger, the blogger, is an Alaskan activist and musician, so while most of his posts relate to Alaskan politics, he also posts tributes when famous musicians die (recently Odetta and Miriam Makeba). Today he simply posted a picture. I'm not going to lnk to the image, but to the blog post, so click through for the picture. It's right next to where my dad used to work and where we used to go on a mid-December Saturday afternoon to get a Christmas tree...but that's a story for another time. Lots of good memories. 

Stay warm! While some people (Gina!) may be living down South, others of us are deeply immersed in winter and already layering to protect ourselves from the -5 windchills. 

Minnesotan

I'm a real Minnesotan now. Not only do I vote there, but I just got my real MN driver's license earlier this week. I love living in the Midwest and Minneapolis is a great city. I'm definitely enjoying this phase of my life :) Minnesota feels more like home, more of a fit for me, than anywhere else I've lived since I've been 17. So while my driver's license photo is horrific, it will be nice to fit in. 

Ironically, I'm writing today from Iowa, where I'm spending Thanksgiving. I'm headed to Kentucky for Christmas though, which I'm looking forward too. One problem about Minneapolis is that it's too far from my family. 

In other news, Simon the Great sent me a great link from the New York Times today. If you want to chip in to buy a piece of the London tunnels, let me know. We currently have 0 of the required 7.4 million dollars. 

Simon and I exchange an average of eight emails a day, many including exciting stuff like the link above. (Simon is the recipiant of all hillarious blogs that appear in my Google Reader. If there's a piece about spiders lost in space or "Paula Deen is trying to kill us: Thanksgiving edition," Simon will get it in her inbox. These inevitably lead to threads of emails about space spiders that will take over the universe and links to video of Paula Deen deep-frying cheesecake...just so you have an idea of our communications.) But Simon's blog, when they write on it (they being Simon and Ivan, her partner in crime), is fantastic. So while I'm busy writing up some of my recent cooking adventures, hop over to her site to read a hysterical piece on alpacas.

Two Notes - Computing and Movies

First, on computing. I am 25 and I sit in my computer history class, twice a week, with students who are sophomores and juniors in college. I know that, computing wise, they are not from my generation. When I TAed a class for freshmen in 2007, they were noticably more modern than me. I was lucky. I had instant messenger in high school, after three years of email and telnet at home. They had had instant messenger in middle school and email all throughout their teen years. They started off on AOL or Compuserve, while I started using ERIC (educational resource information clearinghouse...real thriller material). Sometimes, however, knowing things doesn't really sink in. 

Today the prof was talking about the Lisa computer (see above). People were asking about the drives and the prof said they were 5.25" floppy drives, and took the time to mention that they were originally called floppies because they were actually floppy...as in flexible. Well, yeah, I thought to myself. We called the 3.5" disks floppies even though they weren't flexible. Then it hit me, while I loved playing Monopoly off of 5.25" floppies, most of my classmates didn't ever use them. They only know the floppy that is 3.5" and sturdy... It's times like this when even being 25 feels old.

Movies. Tuesday night is girls night. Ben plays Xbox Live games with friends from undergrad and I go out with a friend, usually for dinner and a movie.  The movie usually is supposed to fufill two criteria. First, the movie should be one that we wouldn't be able to get our boyfriends to watch. Second, the movie should be somewhat uplifting/funny/heartwarming/cheerful/not morbid and horrible. 

So usual fare includes movies like 27 Dresses, Made of Honor, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Mamma Mia! Those are great movies and served their purpose well. The fall lineup has been less than stellar, however, and while we have some 2009 movies on our slate already, we had few fall movies. Two weeks ago, our choices was the swoony Richard Gere movie Nights at Rodanthe. Except for the fact that we ended up sobbing, it was pretty good. But we decided that we were going to ban depressing movies from girls night. Last week we skipped, but this week we were able to see the Duchess. I had thought, briefly about arguing for the British comedy Happy-Go-Lucky, but we wanted to see the Duchess for a while, so there we went.

And it was horrible. It actually made me hate Ralph Finnes. Not personally, but his character was the slimiest of all slimeballs (as the late 1700s went). The gist of the plot (based on a real story) is that a society girl under 18 is arranged to be wed to the Duke of Devonshire so he can bear a male heir. He is a non-speaking philanderer and is emotionally abusive to Georgiana, by never speaking to her or awknowledging her, except if he is trying to begat a male heir. It's really horrible. While we weren't crying afterwards, I think we were both pretty angry and the 1700s powers that be for being so useless for womens rights. While we can't do anything to change the past, we have decided that we are no longer allowed to pick movies for ourselves. Obviously we are incapable of selecting light and frilly chick flicks. Suggestions are welcome. (Suggestions that obviously do not meet our criteria will be ignored.)

Praise of music

Here's the sermon and the prayer from the 40th anniversary celebrations for Philip Brunelle at Plymouth Church. (Both links are pdfs) Or you can listen to the sermon here. Vivian has a strong Welsh accent and the recording isn't studio quality, but it's fun. See this post if you want more context. 

I'm trying to post more frequently, but its obviously not working that well.

Reminiscing about Voting

My family is fairly good about not assigning gender roles. Both my parents cook, my brother and I both play legos, and I've never owned a Barbie (yes, that would be funnier if my brother had, but he hasn't). Yes, there are some things that we only did with one parent. (Mom went swimming, ice skating, and canoing while dad went fishing and float-tubing.)

My bro and I - Barbie free for 21 years when this photo was taken

But most indoor things could be with either parent. Since my mom was a homemaker when I was little, she was more likely to volunteer at my school or go on field trips.

Mom and Dad

Voting, however, is something I do with my dad (at school). My mom's a Canadian citizen, so she can't vote. That comes in handy when dealing with political phone calls.

I remember going with dad once, when I was little. They were doing a kids election while the parents voted. The local polling place was my elementary school library, 1.5 blocks from our house. This was probably the 1992 presidential election (I have vague memories of Perot and Clinton) so I would have just turned 9. Dad must have stopped by the house after work, since it was dark. Being November, in Alaska, it was also snowy. A time where it felt, at least to me, like we should be curled up with a book, inside, not headed back to school. Both of us voted and got stickers and I remember it being very exciting. Obviously it was more exciting to me, since my dad has no memory of this.

Our old house, by the school

It was ten years later before I'd go to the polls again with my dad. This time, he picked me up from the dorms around 6.45 or 7, to get to the polls when they opened and to vote in time for him to get back for an early lecture. My first vote being a midterm election, as a liberal in a red state, it wasn't all that thrilling, other than the part where I was part of the process. And there was the cool feeling that this was something that only my dad and I were qualified to do. No matter how much they wanted to, mom and my brother couldn't vote.

In 2004, the process was repeated, only this time I took it more personally. I'd spent the primaries in the UK, watching the bizarre show from abroad, not fully understanding how, when I left in January the nominee was bound to be Dean, and when I returned in June the nominee was Kerry. The day of the elections, I spent the evening in my room, watching returns online, constantly pressing refresh and hoping the map would change. A family friend was running for a state Senate seat in Alaska, and when the electoral math, sans Alaska, was computed, I couldn't bare it. I decided to wait up for the Alaska returns. Hoping, against all hope, that our friend would win, and while that wouldn't make up for map of red, it would at least feel like a small victory. (Sidenote: I like living in a state that votes my way or makes me feel like my vote will count. Polls show Obama with a significant lead in MN, but the Senate race between Barkley, Coleman, and Franken is a true toss-up).

But Gini lost, getting only 31% of the votes. (And yes, this was in Sarah Palin's 'hood, so to speak, and Gini's opponent had been in office since 1995.)

I woke, in the morning, to a bunch of elated classmates. I had one friend to commiserate with, but that was it.

This year will be different. I am more excited than I can ever recall being for an election. I was trying to describe it to my friend Simon who I primarily communicate with online. I've called her three times in the four years I've known her. The first two were when I was on the train to go visit her. But the second was when I called her on my way to go see the Faith Healer with Ralph Finnes. I had to share my raw excitement about seeing Ralph Finnes with someone, and she was the perfect person. She shared my enthusiasm and understood why I'd called. Today, I almost picked up the phone to call her again about how excited I was. We are both die-hard West Wing fans and I was trying to explain that I was almost as excited as watching the show (yes, that sounds pathetic, but in Hollywood they weren't letting voters decide it all, it was the liberal writers...) Her response: "Yeah, I think "Ralph Fiennes excited" about sums it up..."

Ralph Finnes

So here I am, 17 minutes from a day that will define my generation. Many of my classmates from 2004 now have status messages on Facebook supporting Obama. I've donated money to the campaign, passed out voter info flyers, and proudly worn an Obama button (or two, or three) for several weeks. This is an historic election. An election in the internet age. An election where millions have voted early. An election where either ticket, God forbid, will be a first.

So I'm voting. I'll get up in about in about 7 hours and walk a block to my polling place, where I assume I'll stand in lines for a while. I did my research on all the other candidates and initiatives on my local ballot tonight. (There are 18 choices to be made, plus numerous uncontested seats.) I'm voting for myself, I'm voting for my mom, I'm voting for my international friends - both in this country and abroad. I'm voting for my cousin's kids and my future kids. I'm voting to make the world a better place for everyone. And that's really why I'm excited.

Coming soon...more posts.
Right now if I posted it would be all about my crazy life and conference paper. But once that is out of the door, I'll prove to everyone that I am, in fact, still alive.

Misc Musings

I was going to write a lengthy post about my struggles with headaches, but I spent yesterday afternoon with friends who have a five day old daughter and something about being around a child that young makes me not want to talk about my problems. Hopefully I'll have a photo soon of me with little Sophia.

So instead, I'll give you a post written a week ago about a cycling trip from April.

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I’m trying to post more regularly on my blog, which I’ve been neglecting lately. I want to return to the original theme of this blog, which was travel. Hearing a Welshman speak this morning, I was reminiscing back to my trip in June 2007 (chronicled in the archives here), when I went to Wales and went part way up Snowdonia. That got me thinking about other adventurish travel I’ve done lately and so I’m writing now about a bike trip I went on in May 2008.

Hikers on Snowdon

I was in England for a week for the King’s Singers 40^th anniversary concerts and I’d flown over with frequent flyer miles. I spent several days in London, then went up to Cambridge. I had a few extra days and I decided that I wanted to visit Oxford. Knowing, however, that I’m not a huge fan of anything “touristy,” I wanted to do something more off beat. The year before, I’d rented a bicycle at the Youth Hostel in York and spent an hour winding up and back part of the National Cycling Route. Somehow, when I lived in York I only rode my bike on the roads and sidewalks. To Sainsbury’s and back. To the train station. On miscellaneous errands. The discovery of the National cycling paths was amazing to me. So between that and reading in my guidebook about the Cotswolds, I decided to go on a cycling trip (one day) around the Cotswolds.

Cycling Path north of York

I started off in Moreton-in-Marsh. Why? you ask. I’m sure this sounds ridiculous, but one of the composers we frequently sing here at Plymouth is Ian Kellam. At the end of each of his compositions is the location the piece was composed in. His hometown is Moreton-in-Marsh, so I felt I had to start there.

My guidebook (Let’s Go Britain & Ireland 2004) was slightly out of date, but I was hoping that the cycle rental they mentioned was still in business. The shop was a toy shop on the high street (main street, to you Yanks ;)). I had to wait my turn, but I was the only renter at the time. They spent a long time with me helping me plan my route and drawing it on a laminated map with dry erase markers. (See route here: GMap Pedometer)Then I went to the back and they fitted me with a bike. They loaded the basket with a raincoat, a bike pump, and bungee corded the map on top.

The Toy Shop in Moreton-in-Marsh

They said that the shop closed at 5. But if I came back later, I should just come in the back and ring the bell. And the bike wasn’t fitted with lights, so if it got dark and I still wasn’t back, I could call them and they’d come pick me up. I could also call if I got lost or something broke.

One thing that hadn’t really occurred to me was that the Cotswolds is a hilly area. Very hilly. I started out and less than half a mile from the bike shop I realized that this was WAY out of my league. The hill was probably the smallest possible thing that could be classified as a hill. The lines on the topographical map were quite far apart, as opposed to many of the other hills on the map. But I made it to the first small village and as I kept biking down the road, past sheep and horses and gorgeous vistas, I realized that I was not going to die/pass out/fall off a cliff. I had decided that I could make it and gosh darn it, I would.

Batsford Church

Pheasants?

Hiking with Sheep

The Cotswolds is (are?) full of small towns. Town might be too fancy a word. Village? Smattering of houses? I went through, probably, a dozen villages, of which only one had multiple shops.

Small village of Ebrington

With bike and gear in the metropolis of Chipping Campdon

One village had a fete happening and men were wondering down to the town centre in top hats and women in fancy dress and ribboned and flowered hats. Bells were pealing.

Heading to a fete in Draycott

I had to walk up several steep hills, but, as I coasted back into Moreton-in-Marsh, I was pleased. The shop was almost dismayed that I was back so early. They checked, double checked, and triple checked that I was really done. I was ready to be back on the train though. (Or, er… I would have been if I could understand train timetables.) I went to a small tea shop for tea and scones, bought some postcards, and then waited at the train station for about an hour until the train came to carry me back to Oxford. I was bruised and marked with grease stains on my legs and hands. They took a few days to come off, but were well documented in my self portraits.

This reminds me. I really should buy myself a bicycle soon. As in, before the snow starts falling…

Promised post - Church Music & other asides

I was going to post this earlier and edit it in the meantime, but I forgot... so here is the unedited copy written on Sunday (10/12) after church while eating lunch and reflecting. No judgment, evangelism, or uncomfort intended. Instead, I hoped that this might help people understand more about me and how I, personally work, which is unique, or so I think.

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There are days that I love life and there are days that I LOVE life. Ignoring the past 30 minutes, this is one of the latter. (The past 30 minutes involved my wireless card causing three consecutive blue screens of death…so I have no internet for the afternoon.)

Image by smenzel

I know that many of you are not religious or are atheists, but most of you who know me know that I am religious, although I sometimes hide it behind choir (i.e. I’m at church because of choir) which is, at times, true. And I am most certainly not an evangelical or a conservative. I’m very quiet about my faith and I’m very liberal and inclusive. I think that my only religious t-shirt is a “Hellfire and Dalmatians” shirt.

I should start from the beginning though. Last night I was going to write a ranting post about how much I hated my work and research and the like. This was expressed well through my file naming “E:/Fall 2008/Research/I hate the world/make_it_work.py” I’m working on Wikipedia research and we have a huge amount of data to go through. Yesterday I discovered a problem which meant that we might have to rerun our program that takes 8-9 days, because the data we’re getting is incorrect. This wouldn’t be a problem, except that we were trying to get the paper done by November 3^rd and were pushing it as it was. Now, assuming that this error does actually exist (and it’s the same magnitude of difference that I expect), there’s no possible way to get the paper out in time, because it would require a minimum of a week to get the data and that’s pushing it.

So yesterday afternoon I was wrestling with data and trying desperately to make things work that weren’t currently working. Ben was amazing and calmed me down and helped me write the code that would fix what we thought the initial problem was. He also made corn casserole which ended up spilling butter onto the bottom of the oven resulting in the smoke alarm going off, billows of smoke coming from the oven and me laughing for the first time all day. (No one was hurt or items damaged, so I was allowed to laugh.) Then we watched an episode of Psych, so I went to bed feeling better already.

But today was a special day at church. Our choir director, Philip Brunelle, was celebrating his 40^th anniversary as choir director/organist here. First, that’s impressive even if it’s a part time/volunteer thing. But staying in the same job for forty years is amazing, and he’s kept up or exceeded the caliber of music as years have gone by (or so he alludes to).

Image of Philip and Carolyn Brunelle from Richard Sparks

Today was an all out celebration. He was, of course, at the organ, and we sang some fun pieces (Rorem, Stainer, and Brittan). All the prayers, responses, readings, etc were about music and I hope to get a copy of the pastoral prayer to post because it was truly gorgeous. Philip is also good about dropping out on the organ for a verse, or the alleluias at the end of a verse, etc and letting the congregation sing, a cappella. The only other place that I’ve seen this work is at Mennonite churches. Usually without the organ, the congregation drops and you can barely hear them. This morning, though, they had to bring in extra chairs, so the congregation was full and full-throated. We got to sing multiple verses a cappella and it was glorious.

In addition, the former senior minister at Plymouth, Vivian Jones, had flown over from Wales for this celebration. He split the sermon with the current senior minister, Jim Gertmenian, and both were excellent tributes to Philip and to music. I have to work a bit to understand Vivian, as I’m not used to listening to the rolling accents of the Welsh, but Vivian was hilarious and reminisced about working here (starting from before I was born…). Jim is generally more straight laced in his sermons and so I wasn’t surprised that his part of the sermon was less personal reminiscence and more lessons. (Again, I’ll try to get copies of these.) But Jim spoke of the origin of earth in the Big Bang, the Genesis story “Let there be light,” and the fact that music must be part of the origin of life as we know it. He spoke of being “almost unable to forgive” the writers of the Gospels for not including any descriptions or stories of Jesus as a musician.

Perhaps this is because of my personal strangeness, but immediately as Jim was preaching, I realized I agreed completely. My image of life is, while not focused on music, strangely partnered with music. I spend multiple hours a day listening to my ipod and I sing incessantly, when appropriate. I am strangely private about my musical life. I never want solos or to be singled out and I hate playing/singing for people. Some of you will be surprised to know that I can play (in order of competence more to less): piano, trombone, flute, clarinet, fiddle, recorder, trumpet, tuba, and drums. Five of these are due to taking an instrumental education class in college, for fun, others are out of personal interest. Last year I bought myself a digital piano. I love that I can play it with headphones and I tend to end up on the piano bench at times when I can’t face sitting at a computer or I’m frustrated with everything (although not yesterday). I play Hannon studies, the first half of Bach’s Prelude 21, a piece by Telemann, or anything that my piano will play so I only have to play one hand. I have to concentrate hard enough on these pieces that I forget everything else. Piano also requires much more hand, eye, brain coordination than most of my everyday activities. And yet most of my friends have never heard me play. I don’t think I’m much good, but I like playing for myself.

I’m also a moody music person. I get frustrated when my ipod, on shuffle, is playing “all the wrong pieces.” In the same way, I love when my ipod “knows what I want to hear.” Yeah, it sounds crazy, but I’m productive with the right music. (If only the iTunes Genius feature could be run on my 5^th gen ipod on the go.) Last night, on my last bit of patience, I cranked up the volume of The Killers, because I needed angry music to program to. Then I calmed down and switched to Moxy Fruvous. And, given enough time, I might have ended with Kristin Chenoweth.

So because I’m such a musical person, at heart, a church service like this morning’s is exactly what I needed. It didn’t matter that my research was shot, that I had a searing headache, or that my butt was sore from a bike ride yesterday. All that mattered was the notes and the harmonies. And that is yet another reason why I absolutely love my church here.

(You want another reason why I love it? The 70 year old woman in a wheelchair at the back had an Obama ’08 bumper sticker on her wheelchair. How cool is that? More reasons include that one year Jim’s Easter sermon was about how the resurrection didn’t happen and one of his Valentine’s day sermons was about sex. Yes. Not abstinence or anything along those lines. Sex. I need to get a copy of that, cause I can’t find mine.)

So now, as I’m sitting, trying to work, sans internet, and waiting until the Hymn Sing at 4:30 (we’re even singing militant hymns….we never get to sing those), I’m realizing how lucky I am to be here and how much I will miss this community when/if I ever have to leave.

Picture of Plymouth Congregational Church taken by ecv5

I'm BACK

I have been a very negligent blog host lately, and I apologize. I've been sucked into courses, research, and conferences. However, this afternoon I was sitting around with my laptop and no internet connection and so I wrote some blog posts that have been on my mind. I hope that having a seeded group of pieces to start from will help me ease my way back. Unfortunately, you may find them a bit long, but I'll try to break them up a bit.

Here's a picture from my conference at the Keystone Resort in Colorado.

Tomorrow (10/13): A post about the musical wonderfulness that was today :)

When I am fast asleep

At 5am, police cars will lead the first non-construction cars over the I-35W bridge. This is the bridge on Sept 2, 2007 (courtesy of Ben).

At 5 am, I'll still be asleep, but the new bridge will be a welcome change. There are piles of rubble on the shore and the bike path is still closed, but about 14 months after it fell, a new bridge will be in place. 

I feel like I should write more about the collapse, but that will need to be another day.  More information on the bridge opening is at MinnPost.