Back from my break

I've been out of town for several weeks, first in Boston at CHI, the big conference in my field and for the past two weeks in Southern Utah on a backpacking trip with friends.

Hopefully I'll get pictures and stories up soon, but here are some previews.

At the ocean with my cousin and two of his kids in Groton, CTLooking down to the Escalante River and Stevens Natural ArchAndy is a cavemanBen is going on a hikeReid, our fearless trip leader

The Magical Interwebs

So the internet is this cool thing. You can talk to people online, or as my mom would say "talk" to people online, and write letters, and download music, and record the minutiae of your life. Pretty fast and advanced and you can save shipping costs on purchases, right?

Wrong. I decided to buy the Eric Whitacre Concert Download. It's an online download. I didn't buy it on Friday or Sunday cause I hadn't decided if I wanted to buy it yet. It's $15, I'm a soon-to-be-poor grad student. I went online yesterday to buy it and noticed something strange. The price was listed as $15 plus shipping and handling. That's odd, I thought to myself, why would they charge shipping on an online download.

The total cost for me will be $18.98. $3 shipping and $.98 tax. So. There are people that will address an envelope (at my church) and then mail it to me with a card in it. The card will have a code that I have to go type in on a website to get my download.

I told this to Ben and he came up with a good analogy: "It's like I respond to an email with a paper letter, that I mail, and then they respond via email." WHAT? Bizarre. I think I'll call them tomorrow and see if I can stop by the office with $16 in hand in exchange for a magic code...

A scattered musical post

This weekend I went to several musical events around town. I went to the VocalEssence Community Sing with Eric Whitacre, the English Soireé by soloists at church, and the open rehearsal for the Eric Whitacre Extravaganza.

Usually if I love listening to a piece, I love singing a piece. The opposite is not always true. There are a number of pieces that I love singing, but they aren't great listening pieces. I love music. Being surrounded by it and participating in the joy it provides. In my singing days I've enjoyed singing pieces from Pachelbel, Bach, Britten, Tavener, Duruflé, Schwartz, Swayne, etc. Whitacre is different (in a good way). Here's what the Pioneer Press had to say "Teenagers are shouting from the balconies. The sellout crowd is on its feet, roaring its approval. The handsome young star stands center stage, pumping his fist, caught up in the excitement. You're at ... a choral concert at Minneapolis' Orchestra Hall."

For those of you who are more visual, here's the image. I described him to my dad as looking "kindof like a surfer dude." Let's just say there's a reason why many of the women at the Friday event had brought their cameras. (A reason he also plays to by expressing that there's a reason he writes for SATB and not TTBB, etc. He is married and has a son though...in case you wondered.)

Image from vocalessence

Whitacre burst onto the music scene in the 90s. By the time I encountered his music in 2002, he had made a name for himself in both the choral and band worlds. His music has a unique sound. He uses tonal clusters liberally and enjoys very textured lines. His work is mostly not-sacred, but conveys feelings that many sacred pieces convey.
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I just got off the phone with my dad and I think I've figured out how to word this. There are two primary types of music that give me goosebumps. (I'll reserve the right to get goosebumps to other music as well.)

First is perfectly harmonious and resolved sections of pieces. The most recent example that I can think of is the last page of Hymn to the Creator of Light by John Rutter. (It's the only Rutter piece I've ever heard that doesn't sound like Rutter.) This is also the vibe I get from She's Always a Woman or Down to the River to Pray by the King's Singers. Exquisitely executed simple harmonies that appeal to the "pretty music" side of me. As I write I think of more examples: Ubi Caritas by Duruflé.

Second is music that conveys power and commands respect. My dad brought up the example of the countertenor in the top line of Henryk Góreck's Totus Tuus, about 2.5 minutes in. This is the raw power that is conveyed in much of Whitacre's work, be it a piece talking about love, Leonardo da Vinci, or the death of a child. The tonal clusters and clashing sound waves help to build the angst within the power and portray conviction.

I don't feel as if I am really able to explain this in words. If there's enough interest, I could make a cd that I think would be able to write my post much better than me.
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One of the really fun things in getting to sing with Whitacre at the Friday event and watching him at the open rehearsal was seeing him conduct his own music. I'd sung it before, but with other conductors. As Philip mentioned, it's unusual these days for a composer to be able to conduct and Whitacre does it with ease and elegence. On Friday we started off with Lux Aurumque and sang the firs two measures without music about ten times before he stopped us and laughed, saying that he should have brought more than the 4 songs he'd planned for the 1.5 hours. I love the talent in this town. He's very expressive and conducts almost all his pieces without music. His movements are like those of a dancer. My dad picked up on this by just looking at the still photos.

Images from vocalessence

Enough eye candy folks!
Some music is available on his myspace page and he also has a facebook page with most of the music from his techno-opera based on manga featuring kickboxing angels.
In summary: Eric Whitacre rocks and goosebump music is awesome.

A bonus prize for making it to the end of this scrambled post. Maria Jette sings in my church choir. She was one of the soloists on Saturday night, having rushed over from the Prairie Home Companion taping in downtown Minneapolis, where she sang Air on a G String. Not exactly your grandmother's Bach.

Happy Picture Post

I was going to write about some people I currently detest. (People in the news not in real life.) Then I got too down, and decided to post travel pictures instead. (But if you would like to read about tolerating the intolerant, please take a look at this sermon. Yes, I post a large amount of sermons given that most of my 4 readers don't go to church, but I find that my ministers put a lot of time and intellectual thought into their sermons and I feel that you, my readers would appreciate that.)

When I went to Chicago last month, I spent over 16 hours (with power) on the train. I could only work on my paper submission for so long, so I spent some time organizing my pictures and pulling out favorites. Here are six pictures from my travels, proving that I travel to places other than Europe.I never tire of this image from Florence, Italy. I've posted it before, but I think it's my favorite travel picture to date. Great memories of lots of gelato with Rachel and some amusing incidents with my Italian. Namely that in trying to buy bus tickets I ended up buying two parking spots for one hour at the train station in Lugano, Switzerland. In 2004, I studied in England and got 4 weeks off over Easter to review for exams and travel. My roommate was also studying abroad in France so I went to visit her in Grenoble and then we flew up to London to tour the UK for a week. This was taken by her bus stop on the way to the University of Grenoble. I love the alps!
May Day (Ascension Day) at St. John's College Cambridge. The choir was supposed to sing from the tower, but the rain and hail made that unsafe, so they sang from the yard. All the children from the school were all around the courtyard with parents and tourists. Quite a festive occasion, made more so with the great white and red robes.
This is from a class trip to Mexico in 2003. We were studying the role of women in the Zapatista community and traveled to Oaxaca and Chiapas. This lady was part of a women's weaving cooperative about an hour from Oaxaca city. The coop was called Las Mujeres De Vida Nueva.
Sometimes I even travel when injured. This was my current state when Mom was visiting California this past summer. My equipment that week ranged from crutches and aircast to cam walker boot and cane. We couldn't miss the opportunity to visit Monterey and take cheesy injured Katie pictures.

Misread Headline of the day

I read a lot of headlines on a daily basis (NY Times, Star Tribune, NPR, Slashdot, etc) and I often miss a letter or read something incorrectly. I thought it would be funny to post them

I read: Bacon Restored to Glamour of Vaudeville Days
I imagined an article about how bacon is in, as it once was. I was a little confused as to the tie between bacon and Vaudeville. Then I read it again.

Actual Title: Beacon Restored to Glamour of Vaudeville Days
A theatre is restored. Way less confusing and funny.

Eight Years Ago

I don't think any of my conservative friends read this blog, so I won't feel bad about being partisan here. Yesterday I had a big deadline, so today was spent lounging around, watching the inauguration and generally trying to relax.
Watching Obama take the oath of office and give his excellent speech was an amazing time for me. I haven't been very active in following politics in the far past (i.e. more than 5 years ago) so this was the first inauguration I've watched. It took me back to eight years ago though.January 20, 2001 I was driving from Goshen to South Bend Indiana, in the van with my mom. I was a high school senior (yes, I'm young) visiting Goshen for a scholarship weekend, I believe, and we were driving to South Bend for the day to visit my cousin's family. On the way there we turned on the radio and the voices of NPR brought the inauguration to us.

No one could have predicted what the next eight years would have in store for us as a country, or what an impact Bush's presidency would have on the country and on the world. (Interpret this statement as you see fit.) Nor could I have predicted what the next eight years would have in store for me personally.

With my brother and two cousins - Summer 2000

I headed to the movies for Girl's Night tonight and remarked on how unlikely I would have thought my current life was eight years ago. That 17 year old wouldn't have had a clue what LaTeX was, let alone how to write a paper in it. She didn't know where she was going to college, just that she had interests in Math and Peace and Justice Studies. She read incessantly and wrote for the school paper. She was taking a college course in Hymnody, the history and study of hymns. She desperately wanted to spend a semester abroad in South Africa learning about the South African choral tradition. She'd never left the US and Canada and had only been to three King's Singers concerts.

Kayaking in Aialik Bay July 2008

Today I'm in my fourth year of a Ph.D. in computer science. I'm living in Minnesota, typing this post on a MacBook!, play guitar hero on occasion, and have cable tv. I've been going to the gym to build up my endurance and learn to run. Last summer I spent several days in the woods in the middle of nowhere with no electricity, no running water, and bears, leading me to conclude that kayaking made more sense than hiking. Instead of South Africa, I ended up studying in England, leading to my current love-affair with the British Isles. I've traveled, multiple times, in nine countries and have seen the King's Singers about 20 times in four countries. (Yes, watching Flight of the Conchords did lead me to self-reflection.)

Some things are the same. I still sing in my church choir, still love to read L'Engle, Feynman, and the New Yorker. I still dream about living abroad, speaking another language fluently, and being a better pianist. I'm a good cook, fairly messy, and a bit klutzy.

I assume that the people around me are following politics, so I assume that you could conduct a similar assessment of the US over these past eight years.

I like to think that my life now is better than I would have expected eight years ago, which I do not think holds true for our country. But on November 4th, we gave the nation another chance. Right now we are struggling, but the tunnel is not dark any longer. There is a light that, at noon today, got a whole lot brighter, illuminating the tunnel and helping us to see our surroundings and the path ahead. We will not escape the tunnel without making some wrong turns or stumbling here and there. But we have a leader who will help us forward, who will make sure we don't get lost in the back, and who will have the confidence to ask the person who's been in the tunnel before to help lead us out. And that, my friends, will make all the difference.

Dream Job

I'm pretty sure that my dream job would be working for/with/at Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. I laughed for two straight hours tonight at the taping and all the show staff and personalities seemed to be having a great time too. I need to actively start campaigning MPR to bring them to MN. Both Mo and Peter want to come, but because MPR plays them in a bad slot (2-3 on Saturdays perhaps?) they won't bring them for a live performance. However it seems like all my MN peeps listen to them either on the radio, or, more likely, on the podcast. So I need to start emailing and writing MPR once a week or something and threatening to withhold my miniscule pledge if they don't shape up. That's my dream profession they're dissing.

But seriously folks, it was a great evening. Well worth the $22 I paid and to be honest it makes me want to pledge to Wait Wait specifically to help ensure it's smooth path into the future. What made the show even more fun, is that, as Peter said, it was coming back from vacation for them and was their anniversary show, so it was apparently a little crazier than usual. You folks will probably hear a small portion of that this weekend. So tune in!

I'll post pictures sometime in the not so distant future. I somehow ended up telling Carl Kasell about PPR when I met him. I did not, however, remember to tell Mo Rocca that while sometimes Morris Dancers dance with lightsaber-esque sticks, they also sometimes dance with hankies. I feel that that is a very important fact and would have made all their cracks that much funnier. Although you can't make nunchuks out of hankies. Or not very effective ones.

But, having rambled on for far too long, I will leave you to your lives and will head upstairs to the warmest youth hostel room in the Northern Hemisphere. (Makes the condo feel like the arctic.) Adieu!

Rogue Rice Pudding

I haven't died, nor have I written the promised Bible post for y'all. But I did have a talk with my mom about how she thinks I should write higher quality posts instead of apologizing all the time. So here's a short one for my mom.

I just got home from choir. I was excited because I had found myself a ride to the Amtrak station at 7am, saving myself 30-45 extra minutes on the bus or waiting around downtown. But Ben appeared to not be home. Then I heard clinking and cluttering in the bathroom, but the lights weren't on. Ben insisted that he didn't need the lights to brush his teeth. Then he kept dropping something, so I switched on the light. Then he dropped his toothbrush into the toilet, making it the second toothbrush since April to fall into the toilet.

That as a stand alone incident isn't that funny, really. But then the microwave started beeping at me and I got mad at it and went to take out the rice pudding that I'd heated up. It was in a nice 1 cup ziploc container. Somehow the rice pudding JUMPED out of the container and ended up on the edge of the microwave half fallen out. So what did I do? I ran to the rescue of the rice pudding. I grabbed it in my hand, ran to the cupboard and threw it into a bowl. It was burning my hand. Then Ben came in and I explained that I had just thrown the rice pudding across the room to save it. Hysterical laughing from both parties ensued. Not so random aside: the rice pudding was made in under an hour from dry rice in the rice cooker. It worked out well, if you ignore the crunch in the currents that expired 1.5 years ago.

Now we are using video chat across the room. It makes funny echo noises.

I really shouldn't keep writing my conference paper tonight. I should obviously go to bed. Or pack. Or something. But to keep the conversation going, I will ask you this: What would you do with rice pudding gone rogue?

End of Term

I'm currently in end of term craziness...so I really should go back to studying for my evil 8am math final. But tune in tomorrow for an amusing discussion on Biblical inconsistencies and the like. Brought to you by the emails of myself and the elusive Simon...

Yogurt

As I write this, it’s 81 degrees in my bedroom, which is significantly cooler than, what I imagine is at least 10 degrees cooler than the study and about 5 degrees cooler than the kitchen. Outside I imagine it’s about 5 degrees and very windy. [Editorial note: This was written last night. Today at church the boilers weren't working and so the sanctuary got it's first glimpse of heat an hour after I got there. I was suddenly missing my tropical condo.] 

But that’s not what I’m really writing about. Recently I’ve been doing a lot of cooking. I guess I take after my dad a bit in that writing is somewhat soothing and relaxing for me. This does, I know, make me weird. I actually banned myself from cooking this week in order to get some work done. That was a successful move, so I may have to repeat the ban in the future.

The first of my recent culinary adventures was yogurt. The recipe that inspired me was a blog post by the folks at White on Rice Couple They had a recipe for Vietnamese Yogurt which made yogurt making seem easier than it had seemed before. They use sweetened condensed milk which made the yogurt a bit too sweet for my tastes, but nice and creamy.

If you’re really interested, you can go to their site, but the basic gist is mix sweetened condensed milk and water. Then mix milk and live yogurt cultures (translation: already made yogurt). Then mix them all together. In the mean time, heat up water in pots and heat up canning jars (I ended up using 9 half pint jars). Then pour the yogurt into the canning jars and turn off the heat to the pots. Then place the jars in the pots (uncovered) and fill the pot til the water is higher than the yogurt. Then place a cloth over the pot and wait until the water cools (this will take FOREVER…as in 2-3 hours) Be vigilant. You don’t want the water to be cool for too long. Then put the heat back on and heat the water. Then turn it off again. And wait, again. When the water is cool, the yogurt should be mostly set. So you put the lids on the canning jars and throw it in the fridge. (Well, not literally. That would be super messy.) They’ll set up more in the fridge.

So that’s it folks. That’s how you can make yogurt. At least one way. For future adventures, I probably won’t make this recipe, since I prefer my yogurt a little less sweet. It was really good mixed with pomegranate since the pomegranate increased the tang while needing the extra sugar. I also mixed in some cranberry-orange relish that I’d made pre-Thanksgiving. If that hadn’t had sugar in it, it might have been perfect too. I’m a big fan of cranberry. I bought three bags of cranberries a few weeks ago. I made scones and muffins and relish and froze a bag. Delish.

So folks, that is my story about making yogurt. Sometime I’ll write about making bagels, but not tonight.