Why my family is weird: Part 1

My mom (known to the rest of the world as Anne) had wondered why I referred to our family as "weird" in a prior post. This is not weird as a bad thing. I put up a poll on facebook (more on that later) and we determined that my family is weird but "in the best possible way." And, to be honest, a good number of these things are responsible for making me part of who I am today. Some simple reasons for my family being weird:

• I have never owned a Barbie
• My family never got more than 5 tv stations
• The only video games system we ever owned was a Super Nintendo, but that wasn't until I was in college and my brother snuck one in the house somehow.
• Pop music wasn't known in my house until my brother realized he was weird and set out to fix that
• We got to watch a maximum of about one hour a day of tv to be selected from the following: Reading Rainbow, Wishbone, Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, 3-2-1 Contact, Magic Schoolbus (all PBS shows)
• I didn't realize that not all kids spent over an hour a week at the library and maxed out their library card every week. Our limit was 40 books. Yes, we both checked out 40 books at a time.
• I started cooking around age 8. I started making dinner once a week around age 12. By 15 or so I was cooking dinner for the family 3 nights a week.

So that's a simple, small start. Here's more proof with pictures.

Most of our family pictures look something like this. Of particular amusement is my brother off to the side. He's making faces. If you scroll down, you might guess this is genetic. You might be right.

Dad's friend found a giant mushroom in his brother's backyard, rescued it and left it on my parents' porch. Dad immediately photographed it and called his brother to see if it was safe to eat. It was and I think dad said it was yummy.

Rosie is on the right and Rosette? is on the left. Rosie was given to me when I was 1 by a dear friend in Madison, WI. I've had her ever since which is why her face is yellow. I wasn't allowed to have cabbage patch dolls, but since Rosie wasn't a cabbage patch doll, she was allowed. Also, take note of the fact that she is wearing a native Alaskan winter fur-lined parka, made by my mom. The other doll, now I think she's called Rosie II (found at a thrift store), is wearing a Red Riding Hood Cape and pajamas made by my mom. Original Rosie is wearing a sleeper that I wore as a baby. Because my family has that stuff lying around. Because my mom and I kept it...

Another example of why my family is weird. I was going to say my brother. But that is mean, and I love him, so I won't say that. I'll say it's cause we sleep on mattresses on the floor. This is genetic and is not just a trait in my immediate family. (Anthony is solidly asleep in this picture though. Apparently he was comfortable.)

When we were little, this was the sort of thing we did to amuse ourselves instead of watching tv or playing with video games or Barbies. It wasn't Halloween. (Rory, in the middle, is unrelated and probably unaware of what she has gotten herself into.) There are also pictures of us playing with bins of flour. More typically we'd play with Legos and wooden blocks, but that's not as exciting and I don't have pictures.

Dad has started making everything from scratch including sausage. It's not anywhere near as gross as people make it out to be. But it's weird that he makes it. The sausage and cheese making started AFTER I left for grad school. I do not find that to be coincidental.

Dad also makes pizza. His two best pizzas are grilled pizzas and his pesto/cottage cheese/veggie pizza which you see pictured above. It is made even better with homemade pancetta.

To reassure myself that others also find my family weird, I asked people on facebook: " Fun late night survey time. If you know my family: are we weird or normal? Vote in the comments." I didn't get many respondents, but I did get three weird votes "but in the best possible way." Anecdotal evidence: "I always remember when we went trick-or-treating there and your parents gave us fresh baked sourdough bread. That was the bomb." "Her dad makes the best kaiser rolls ever."

I finish with a comment from my mom from this evening, proving yet again, that my family is not normal: "An idea for a short blog post - your dad's foray into making pancetta. We're completely out of it, but we have all the pieces parts - your dad just needs to find the time to put it together before your Thanksgiving visit. Let's see - only 21 days left, and he doesn't even have a timetable drawn up yet!"

Opinion Piece: Bacon Jelly Beans

Reid's suggestion for posts was to do shorter opinion pieces. So here goes.

Context: Simon hates bacon. Ok. She doesn't hate it all, but this is what she says:

"I prefer bacon to be used in acceptable ways. You may eat bacon with your eggs, your pancakes, your hash browns, even your sausages, if you have considerable faith in your cholesterol levels. You may eat bacon in salads. You may eat bacon in sandwiches. There are many ways to consume bacon that are fully appropriate. And then there are methods by which the consumption of bacon is rendered inappropriate. You wouldn't think of these on your own without some kind of diabolical intervention, so I will provide you with a list."

Read more about her thoughts (and her list) here. Basically she doesn't believe bacon should be in cookies or candy or vodka or cupcakes or chocolate. I disagree. I may have forced my beliefs on her in the past...

So for my birthday she sent me a package which included among other things, a Mo's Bacon Bar (mmm!) and

Opinion before eating: Bad idea. (Note: I don't really like Jelly beans in the first place. And bacon without maple or brown sugar or chocolate is somewhat scary to me.)

Opinion after eating: Bad idea. If you would like to sample one or two or ten to disagree, please let me know. Even the people who have claimed to like them (aka Ben) have only eaten one. The guys in the lab refused more than one. Thus, Simon has likely won the bacon war.

So if you are wondering whether to buy bacon jelly beans or bacon dental floss for your loved ones for Christmas, I would advise the dental floss. (It smells like bacon, but tastes like nothing!)

Back in time

Well, loyal readers, it is late. That is because I did not fully understand the terms of Ben's challenge (so I had to do an extra 30 minutes of exercise...). And because I made dinner, called my parents, and planted some plants in farmville (EVIL EVIL GAME!). Then I checked election results. But I thought that maybe on Tuesdays throughout November I'd go into my archive of old photos and post some of them here. They will, of course, be embarrassing, making it all the better for you, the reader. Today's theme is Alaska, because I was telling Alaska stories today.

You might be surprised to learn that there is grass in Alaska and it does turn green. Otherwise my dad wouldn't have had a job. I am wearing thick gloves in this picture though. I'm also hoping that my brother is wearing boots and that his jeans aren't rolled up, cause that would be really embarrassing for him if they were...

We had to shovel off our deck so that the snow didn't cave in our garage or melt into it. When I say we, I mean my mom. This lead to us having great piles of snow surrounding the garage for sledding or tunneling. Or posing for pictures in. Notice the great reflective tape on my coat, this is a recurring theme. Mom could never find coats that were reflective enough, so she'd always sew on additional reflective tape. That's what happens when you walk to and/or home from the school bus in the dark.

This was probably taken around 4 or 4:30pm. I would tell you 11am, but that would imply I was skipping school which was definitely not the case. Unless this was the year I was homeschooled...

I love that I have a more dazed look than the snowman. I believe, in retrospect, that this was fairly common throughout middle school. My mom's most frequent accusation was that I left my brain in my locker. Looking back, I think this was probably deserved. Also, that hat plus that hood made my head look ginormo.

Apparently, even with all the snow outside, I still needed snowflake sheets. And a Flags of the World poster. That was before I upgraded to the Map of the World that had a border of Flags of the World. I would also like to take this moment to point out that while I sometimes complain about my family being weird (which is very true) it is also very cool that in addition to reading out loud almost every single night between 0 and about 12 or so, we also sang for a portion of that. While most of it was a capella, apparently sometimes Mom played her guitar. Awwww.

And, because my family doesn't seem weird enough, here we are (my aunt, brother and I) having a picnic on an afghan in the middle of a parking lot IN THE MIDDLE OF WINTER. I believe this was the only winter picnic, because of the high high high volume of complaining (similar to many outdoor activities).

Now I will leave you to your Wednesday and I will start digging up more pictures for next week, because I know this will leave you anxious for more embarrassing pictures and stories, which I will, for some bizzarre and unknown reason, most likely supply.

Halloween

Many of you have heard about my many problems with my halloween costume, so I shall show you how it turned out. This is what happens when you take a "Victorian Vampire" costume, add glue, fabric, posterboard, hot glue, other glues, foam, puffy paint, velcro, and lots and lots of hairspray...

The Queen of Hearts

Under my interpretation it was kindof a 1980s queen of hearts, but it worked. (Oh, and sadly you can't see the super shiny shoes with the puffy paint hearts on them in this picture...but they existed. Reid says they didn't go with my jeans and t-shirt at school during the day though...)

In matching the theme, Adam was the Mad Hatter (since Max, the original Mad Hatter, was sick)

Abby was Alice. She had just crossed me. If you cross the queen of hearts, you get your head chopped off with a heart scepter. It is very scary. (Side note: Abby was very domestic last week and made her apron from a bed sheet. She made the pattern from newspaper and owns a sewing machine.)

I am going to stab the camera person with my scepter because she probably crossed me! Also, Ben makes an appearance as the 5 of hearts. Sadly there are no pictures of the other side of the card. Yes, Ben actually made sure to replicate both sides of the card. Maybe I can get him to reenact his role later this week.

In this picture, the person who has crossed me is obviously Ben, because he painted the flowers the wrong color. So I am cutting out his brains, as is appropriate on Halloween. I have also replaced my smile with an intense stare meant to scare off any future offenders.

I doubt I'll be make a villainess costume anytime in the near future. I like being a heroine SO much better and the costumes seem much easier.

State Fair Art

(Written between 10/2/09 and 11/1/09) Fear not, loyal readers, I have returned from paper mode intact with more tales of the State Fair.

Since we spent about 12 hours at the fair, we got to see many varied aspects of the fair. In the first part of the series, you got to see the goofy looking animals, which is how our day began. In this installment, you'll see some of the unqiue art. Then the final part will be about food. I should also mention that this post was specially requested by Simon, who, with her blog partner Ivan just celebrated her fifth blogoversary. Congratulations!

For some, unexplained reason, some counties get space to make diorama displays. One county made a "Pork is Safe" display with lots of glitter.

From Tricia

They wanted you to know that Swine Flu doesn't mean that you shouldn't eat pork. Noted. Apparently pigs also play baseball...

Another county taught people how to make cheese. They did this by showing them the "Home Cheesemaking" book on an easel. That is sure to inspire home cheesemaking. Other dioramas explained that wolves were endangered, that cannabis was an invasive weed, and that geocaching is fun.


After admiring the amazingly artistic dioramas, we went to look at the seed art. The concept of seed art is very simple. Think elementary school crafts. Glue seeds on a piece of paper to make it look like a picture. First, however, you must admire the corn cobs, as this is where seeds come from. (Scott admires corn well. Ben doesn't do as good a job, especially for growing up on a corn farm.) You can win ribbons if you have good corn. It was unclear as to what made good corn and Ben would not enlighten us.

From Tricia

Then we got to the art. Notice Michele Bachmann, saint of wingnuts, next to Farah Fawcett. Also notice that these are not elementary school art (for the most part).

From Tricia

Then there was the inevitable portrait of Obama. In seeds, of course. (I must keep reminding you that this is seed art...)

From Tricia

And the crowning glory. Self Portrait with First Ladies. Mrs. R.W. Regan and Mrs. G.W. Bush. We don't know who the self-portrait is of or why he has a halo or why the first ladies have animals on their shoulders. There are really so many unanswered questions about this picture. But apparently seeds were the proper medium, so there you have it. Self portrait with first ladies in seeds.

From Tricia

After all the seed art (more on seed art here), we were feeling like we needed a little more dairy, so we headed to the dairy building. In the dairy building, there is a rotating refrigerated platform. This is so that viewers can watch as the butter sculpter sculpts the head of the Princess Kay of the Milky Way and the Princess Kay of the Milky Way finalists. Please, please, please read more about this fascinating Minnesota tradition on the Wikipedia link above. You will not be disappointed. Reid has remarked dismay in the past, that our lab does not qualify as being involved in the production of dairy products, because he thought that I would make an excellent contestant. (I am now too old, sadly.)
One of the benefits to being a finalist in the Princess Kay of the Milky Way competition, is that you get your head carved in a 90 pound block of butter AND then you get to keep the head.
The girl above was interviewed by two of the other finalists (while in the refrigerated platform). One of the questions was "What are you planning to do with your butter head?" You will be pleased to know that her parents had just bought her a freezer for her butter head and she was planning to use it for a corn roast or wedding.

So there you go folks...art at the state fair.

November Challenges

My November challenge is to post once a day (challenge issued by me)! But in order to do that, I must first exercise for thirty minutes (challenge issued by Ben). So there are two ways for me to fail my blogging challenge...by not blogging or by not exercising...and you'll never know which one I'm failing on. We'll see how it goes.

Let me know if you're tuning in.

Migraines

I've been meaning to write something about my headaches & migraines on here for a while, then last night, when reading an old New Yorker, I came across this article in Talk of the Town. It's a brief (1 page) story about Cindy McCain's struggle with migraines and rings quite true for me. So true that I figured it covers almost everything I was going to write about, so we'll start from there. READ ME.

"McCain has decided to become an advocate for the disorder, which, in her view, is a disability. “I’ve missed part of my life. I’ve missed my children in many ways,” she said. “I’ve made every important event, but there’re times I’ve been throwing up out the car window.”"

I haven't thrown up in a while, thanks in great part to the wonder drug ondansetron (zofran), an anti nausea medication that makes my nausea manageable. I used to be skeptical of choir members who were frequently submitting excuses for absenses because they had migraines, but that was before I got them. Now, I understand. If they come early in the day, they usually start mildly. Today I took some excedrin (I was too late to start with sumatriptan) and am working from home. By working from home, I ensure that if I need to sleep it off later in the day, or need an extended break from a computer or words, I can take one. I also don't have to worry about nausea as much as in the office. In contrast, though, if I decide I need to go to urgent care, it will take me 45 minutes to get there instead of 5. Recently though, I've been much better able to manage my headaches, a fact I am quite proud of. If a headache/migraine strikes later in the day, it's usually too late to take anything that will help. Usually I just have to try my best to sleep it off.

I, too, have triggers, some of which I understand better than others. Caffeine, alcohol, and aspartame are some of my strong dietary triggers. I also think that I have some triggers outside my control, including hormonal triggers and changes in barometric pressure. Like McCain, I have some olfactory triggers that I don't understand as well. Strobe lights and loud sounds (including driving for extended periods of time with rolled down windows) seem to be triggers as well.

To keep it in check I take 10 pills a day, mostly supplements (lots of riboflavin and magnesium gluconate) and an anti-seizure medication that has been FDA approved to reduce migraines. I also try to minimize triggers from my environment. Right now I'm also lucky in that, for the most part, I can work from home when I need to. So while I feel that I occasionally miss days of my life, at least I can miss them. Now I just need to work to get them even more under control so that by the time I'm out of grad school my days missed goes from 5% to .5%, so that I don't have to miss days teaching.

So that's a snippet of my life with headaches. There are some more aspects of this as well, but I won't go into that now. Please feel free to ask questions or share comments. I realize that this is an issue that isn't well understood and I'm obviously in a unique position to talk about it. (Reminder that I'm not a medical person, so I'm just sharing my personal experience, not any advice for others.)

State Fair Art is coming up next (should be within a day or so...have to finish writing about butter heads.)

Paper Mode

Crazy Katie - Similar to Paper Mode Katie, but with weirder hair

I'm working on a CHI paper at the moment. Hence my late (2am) nights, crazy days, and lack of response on IM if you aren't Reid, Loren, or Ben. In the past five weeks I've written over 2000 lines of SQL, which isn't bad given I had written almost none prior to five weeks ago. (For those of you who aren't Reid, SQL is a a language for talking to databases and getting information out.)

The bad part is that when I'm this immersed in a project I really am THIS IMMERSED in a project. Example: Last night, when I finally went to bed around 2, I was muttering all night. About what? you may ask. Pie crust. I had to work out a sql query to find the best pie crust at the state fair and then make it. So that I could make awesome pie crust cookies. All while helping with a national election. (The election has to do with the fact that when I'm coding and don't need to think much I turn on West Wing in the background.) So yes. I'm now going certifiably nuts. It didn't help that I was also incredibly hungry all night cause I was dreaming about formulas for pie crust. I think my queries may have worked too...if only I had remembered them, but alas, no. Perhaps tonight?

State Fair: Animals and Pictures of Food

How can you not love the State Fair? In Alaska, the State Fair always meant giant cabbages and rides and winning blue ribbons. In Minnesota, if I've learned anything, it's that the State Fair means Deep-Fried-Things (preferably On-A-Stick).

Tricia is demonstrating the proper excitement to show about "Cheese on a Stick." And who can ignore the draw of "Fresh Fried Fruit On A Stick"?

But the mandatory pictures of every single thing we ate were not on my camera, so I cannot share that with you today.
The Star Tribune gave out Bacon Balm Mmmm tasty!

Sadly this was instead of the map of the fair on a stick with the best food (and newest food-on-a-stick) identified. The lack of such a map made food finding much more difficult than prior years. But the bacon chapstick eased the pain.

I've been to the MN State Fair three times before, but I've never really looked at the animals before. This time I was looking through the eyes of Simon. Alpacas!

Sheep are stupid! They eat their cages.

The lamb lead, it turns out, is a lamb showing competition crossed with a fashion show. The lamb in the foreground is wearing several necklaces. The girl made her own wool dress. She's 13.

This is some breed of chicken called a silkie. I found online where the breed is described as "An oddity of oddities of the poultry and pet world."

And this breed of chicken looks like a teenager who's refusing to cut his hair.

This rabbit looks like my old Himalayan cat.

Join us next time for art and butter at the Fair! Or food. Which ever comes first.

Edit: I'm trying out new blogging software, so for the moment, you can't click on the photos and see larger versions. They can be found in this picasa album. I'm still not sure what I think of the software. I'm looking for a better WYSIWYG editor than blogger provides. Ideas? Anyone?

August (err. July?) Part II

When we left off, we were in Montreal with really tall people, much taller than myself. Following Montreal, Mom and I headed to rural Eastern Ontario to visit my aunt and uncle.

I thought I'd already blogged about this, but apparently the internet ate my blog post. So this is their house. I would like to state for the record that screened porches ARE AWESOME. Particularly in buggy parts of the world. Even more particularly when the bugs like to eat you. (When you is, in fact, an unveiled reference to me.) Yes. I love screened porches. They are not screened in this picture, but were in real life.

We had a lovely 22 hours or so in the pictured house with my aunt and uncle eating lovely food and catching up. Then we were off on the road again.

My grandparents have two homes. A winter home, a condo in the city, and a summer home, a hobby farm or cottage in the country. Seeing as how it was summer, we headed to the farm, which is in the middle of no where. We drove up there and were greeted by my grandparents and a lovely warm dinner.

The next day we did more crazy road tripping as my grandparents needed to go to a funeral and an anniversary party, so we drove about five hours round trip to their condo and then another town. No pictures of that, sorry.

My grandfather loves the farm and maintains two hiking trails on the property. The first is a section of the Bruce Trail, Ontario's version of the Appalachian Trail. The second is a trail that's just on the property called "On Yonder Hill." On day two at the farm, mom and I hiked most of it. Here we are in mosquito protective gear.

Off for a family history tour in the evening. In which Grandma decides to wear the Obama/Biden button I gave her,

we see the house she grew up in,

I decide to buy a house overlooking Georgian Bay

and we see a rainbow during our picnic.

The next day was basically taken up by mom doing yard work, then falling off a ladder, and then dealing with the after effects of her falling off a ladder. (And I got to ride an electric commuter bike.) Then we drove home over the next few days.

But that's boring, so I'll end here with delicious wild black raspberries.