I have a rule of thumb. I’ll try three times to make plans with someone else without a definite response. After that, it’s up to them whether or not to do something. For instance, when asking someone out if I get three non-committal maybes, I won’t bother to ask the person out again. If they were secretly hoping for a relationship but were following some set of advice that says to play hard to get, it didn’t work. Or if they are just too busy to carve out an hour to hang out, I’ll know their time management would annoy the hell outta me if we were to date. This rule of thumb applies to making friends, business relationships, etc.
Any kind of definite response triggers the end of the rule. A no is obviously a no and I’m not going to pursue it. If the answer is yes, obviously the rule no longer applies. If the answer is something along the lines of I can’t do X, but how about Y that also counts as a definite answer.
It’s important to remember this is a rule of thumb, not something I apply rigidly. It depends on the person and the level of relationship I already have with them. But as a rule of thumb it keeps me from wasting my time.
Sometimes people just have to say maybe or cannot commit to a plan. But after three times it tells me they have a fundamental problem (perhaps justified) with being up front. It’s pretty demoralizing to keep chasing something while being strung along. I refuse to be strung along.
My headspace has been awful this week, and today in particular. So today I decided to head to the old multiplex and immerse myself in someone else’s story for a bit. Movies are good for that for me. It doesn’t last, but for 90 to 150 minutes I am totally not thinking about my own problems.
Anywho, Cabin In The Woods has been called in various places a meta-horror movie. The Slut, The Jock, The Scholar, The Idiot and The Virgin all head to a cabin in the woods for a weekend of shenanigans. They all have names, but so much do they fit the cliche that I’ve totally forgotten them already. But, as in all horror movies, things start trying to kill them one by one. The twist in this case (and it happens really early on, so I’m gonna spoil it) is that there is a control room of people orchestrating the horrors that befall the young coeds. Cameras. Remote controls. Etc. Like a reality show gone really wrong.
Does it succeed as a horror movie? I’m not really one to judge as I don’t watch a lot of them, but it wasn’t all that scary. I’m glad for that, as I don’t like to be scared. Because it follows the horror movie script for much of the time, you really know what’s going to happen. It certainly does something different in terms of plot after the first two thirds. So it gets some points for originality.
Does it succeed as meta-horror? I don’t think so. It sure points out how much horror falls into script. It seems rhetorically similar to if it had a character break the fourth wall and tell the audience that we’re gonna follow the horror movie script. It’s really not spoofing, as it’s done not so much to make fun of the horror script so much as to give everyone in the audience a knowing wink.
It most certainly doesn’t subvert the tropes at all. There’s one scene where typically the Slut bares her breasts. The control room people (male) hope for it, and then stare slack-jawed as if they never get the opportunity to see bare breasts. They are trying to orchestrate her death. I’m all for showing boobs in movies (even gratuitously), but that was uncomfortably creepy.
This is the recipe for the Shepherd’s Pie I made for Pie Night. I love me a good shepherd’s pie, but I don’t think I’ve actually ever made it before. I liked this so much I made it again today. It is from Rachel Ray.
Ingredients
2 lbs. Yukon Gold potatoes
Olive oil
1½ lbs. ground lamb
Allspice
1 carrot
1 parsnip
1 onion
all purpose flour
½ cup beef broth
½ cup dark beer
Worcestershire sauce
sour cream
1 egg
½ cup cream
paprika
Prep
Peel and cube potatoes
Peel and chop onion
Peel and chop parsnip
Separate yolk from egg white (discard egg white)
Instructions
Add potatoes to a large pot, cover with water
Bring to a boil over high heat
Cook until tender
Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat
Brown ground lamb
Season with salt, pepper and allspice
Add carrot, parsnip and onion
Cook about 5 minutes
Dust with flour
Cook about a minute
Add broth, beer, and Worcestershire sauce
Cook until thickened
Transfer to casserole dish
Remove potatoes from heat and drain
Return them to the pan and allow to cool bit
Add a few dollops of sour cream, egg yolk, and cream
Last Sunday I participated in the Democratic caucuses. I also participated in 2008, but that was a very different experience. In 2008, I lived in Ferndale for 5 days of the week, and was here on weekends. It was in the midst of the primary between Obama and Clinton, so TOPPS school was packed to overflowing with people there to participate. I had to be back in Whatcom county the day of the caucus, so I couldn’t stay for the whole thing. I stayed long enough to register my preference for Clinton, but couldn’t stay longer.
This year, with only Obama on the ballot, participating was quite a bit lower. My precinct caucus was in the Montlake Community Center. Precinct 43-2001 had only three participants. Me and two women who had never participated in a caucus before. One had been working in France for a decade and had to vote absentee. The other was an Obama campaign volunteer whose parents were American and German, and she’d been living in Germany as a young girl during World War II.
They asked me to be precinct caucus chair, since this is my third caucus. So we all voted for Obama, and then had to select delegates to the county convention and the District 43 caucus. Due to votes in previous elections, 43-2001 had 7 delegates allocated to it. The other two participants could only attend the District 43 caucus. nevertheless, we voted all three of us as delegates.
We also got to propose resolutions that eventually could be made part of the Democratic platform. Those are not debated or voted on at the precinct caucus level. Every resolution proposed is forwarded to the county convention. I assume the organizers combine similar resolutions to avoid duplication at that level. The older woman had seen a resolution on auditing the Department of Defense, but had forgotten to bring it and couldn’t remember the lengthy wording (or any detail at all). So I proposed a short broadly worded resolution for her in the hopes that someone in another caucus was proposing the resolution the woman wanted, and the organizers would combine them. There was a global warming resolution being passed around, and we put it on our list too. I added a resolution that the Democratic party support marriage equality and the referendum on marriage equality that will likely be on the ballot this November.
The district caucuses and the King County Convention are next weekend at 10 a.m. (one event each day). At the point, I’m planning on attending both, if I can find out where they are. The locations were undetermined as of the caucuses last weekend.
One of the current narratives that I see on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and all over a lot of blogs is that Mitt Romney is too rich to be voted into the office of the Presidency.
To which I call bullshit.
First off, we’re never going to have a poor President. At best, we’ll have someone who was poor at one point. But you don’t build a political base large enough to get into the presidency without having the skills to make enough money to live comfortably. The closest we got to poor might have been Harry Truman (a haberdasher) or Abraham Lincoln (who had a successful law practice). There are plenty of Presidents who weren’t rich, but all of them were at least comfortable before they became President.
The basis of this narrative is that a rich person cannot possibly be a force for the have-nots. That’s total crap. Franklin Roosevelt was very rich, but also enacted programs that are the basis for America’s modern welfare state. Not all kajillionaires are self-interested Koch brothers. Sure, many are, but the key thing isn’t that they are rich, but that they are self-interested assholes. And Mitt Romney has plenty of that in spades. I’d much rather that his lying, asshole nature be the focus.
Why does all this bother me? Remember when the media bought into John Kerry as a rich elitist out of touch with America because he wind-surfed? Instead, we got a second term of George Bush. He was folksy, but he was no less rich than John Kerry. But also, and this is the important part, he designed his policies unrepentantly to benefit rich people. But the media rarely talked about that.
Additionally, Mitt Romney, as bad as he will be for America if he’s elected, is a far cry better than some of the poorer Republican possibilities. Remember, Sarah Palin is only 6 years removed from being the mayor of a small podunk city in Alaska.
Sure, rich as an epithet might work at the moment, but it can also be used to tag our candidates unfairly. I’d much rather that the idiots be tarnished with brushes that can’t be used against us. Like his willingness to lie. Or the fact that he will cause the United States to descend into a fiery pit of hell. You know, things that matter.
This pie turned out quite well. Everyone at Pie Night loved it. The caramel was a bit boozier than I thought it would be, but I coulda been doing it wrong. Recipe comes from Dennis Wilkinson. As is normal, I’ve modified it slightly.
Crust
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 stick cold butter
1 tablespoon sugar
dash salt
1½ ounces cold water
1½ ounces vodka
Pretty standard crust, except there’s a bit more liquid than I normally would use for one crust.
Mix the flour, sugar, and salt in a food processor
Cut the butter into 1 tablespoon pieces
Add the butter to the flour mixture
Pulse the food processor until all the chunks of butter are less than pea size
Transfer the flour mixture to a bowl
Combine the water and vodka into a cup
Add the liquid to the flour, alternately adding some and mixing it with a pastry cutter or fork
Work the dough until the liquid is pretty thoroughly combined and the flour forms a ball
Mush the dough into a disc
Wrap it in sandwich paper
Chill for a half hour to an hour in the fridge
Roll into a crust
Place the crust in a 9 inch pie plate (deep dish works better, but I didn’t do that)
Crimp the edges
Weight with foil and pie weights
Bake at 400° for 20 minutes, then remove the weights and bake for 10 more
Remove from oven and allow to cool
Caramel
1 cup sugar
⅓ cup water
1 tablespoon corn syrup
1 cup heavy cream
2 ounces Grand Marnier (original recipe calls for 1 ounce, but I don’t have a 1 ounce measure)
1 orange
Grate all the zest from the orange
Combine sugar, corn syrup and water in a saucepan
Cover and bring to a boil
Remove the cover and continue boiling until sugar starts turning brown
Swirls the pan on the burner periodically until the sugar is reddish brown (it really does turn a reddish brown)
Add the cream and Grand Marnier
Stir until dissolved
Continue boiling until it’s pretty thick (original recipe says thread stage which I have no clue how to judge)
Add the orange zest
Pour it into the pie shell
Cool
The caramel was boozier than I expected. Perhaps sticking to the original amount mighta made it more acceptable to me, as I don’t drink or eat anything with more than a trace of alcohol left in it. I kinda expected it to have cooked off considering how long it was boiling.
Filling
4½ semisweet bakers chocolate
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 tablespoons corn starch
⅔ cup sugar
dash salt
1 cup heavy cream
3 eggs
1 can (14½ ounces) Guinness stout
¼ cup water
1 packet gelatin
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
Combine the water and gelatin in a small saucepan
Separate the egg yolks and discard the egg white
Melt the chocolate in the microwave
In a medium saucepan, combine the cocoa powder, corn starch, sugar, and salt
Whisk in the cream
Whisk in the egg yolks
Whisk in the Guinness
Whisk in the chocolate
Cook and stir the mixture over medium-high heat until thick enough to coat a spoon
Heat the gelatin until it dissolves
Whisk in the gelatin
Remove from heat and strain the chocolate through a strainer into a bowl
Whisk in the butter
Pour into the pie shell (the one with the caramel, not a new one)
Cool to room temperature, then chill in the refrigerator until set
At this point, I had some leftover chocolate, though not a lot. I really should have used a deep dish pie plate. C’est la vie.
Serve with whipped cream.
Click through to the original recipe to see a lovely photo. I didn’t get a good photo of my edition of the pie.
I am still walking around Green Lake 4 or 5 times a week. Today I was feeling a little depressed over stuff, and halfway around I decided I was going to go for a second loop. Work off some of the mood possibly. I worried though that I might go into zombie non-thinking mode and head over to the car after one loop, forgetting the second loop. I do that a lot when I’m pre-occupied. Sunday I meant to swing by U.W. Bookstore and pick up Sly Mongoose from the science fiction section, but forgot despite thinking about it when I got in my car. Today though, I went into zombie mode and actually kept walking around. My preoccupation actually got me to do what I wanted to do. Got 5.6 miles of a very brisk walk in.
I do need to figure out how to keep the little rocks out of my shoes though. At a swift walking pace, my shoes pick them up just enough to fling one or two of them inside a shoe about 4 times in a loop. So I have to stop, remove my shoe, and shake it out. Multiple times. I wonder if spats would work. That has the added bonus that I would be the dorkiest guy at the park.
In addition to buying season tickets for the Sounders Men, this year I bought a season ticket for the Sounders Women. After they signed a bunch of women’s national team players, I figured it might be the only chance I get to see such great players regularly. The team is an amateur team, so it can’t normally get top flight players. But with the demise of the W.P.S., they want to play somewhere and apparently it’s for soccer-crazy Seattle. If WPS revives, we might not get a team simply because of travel costs.
Anyway, last night was the first match of the season. It was an exhibition against Seattle Pacific University. Seattle Pacific is out of season, so they didn’t have a lot of their players. Basically, we all expected a rout, and that’s pretty much what we got. SPU’s second half keeper was pretty good, and they had a forward whose play I liked as well. I didn’t catch either of their names. It was a chance for all of them to say they’d played against Hope Solo, Sydney Leroux, Alex Morgan, etc.
I noticed two big differences between the teams. First, the Sounders were much faster. They could run rings around SPU. And did a couple of times. Second, SPU players were really indecisive. When a ball dropped somewhere, Sounders immediately moved. Some moved toward the ball to pick it up or challenge for it. Others immediately moved for the pass. Even though they haven’t played together much, their experience tells them what their role should be. Their execution wasn’t always crisp, but they knew what to do. SPU players took a half second to decide, and they frequently appeared to change their minds two steps after starting.
Final score was 5 to 0. Hope Solo had maybe one save, and she spent a fair amount of time wandering around the midfield. If SPU had the skill, they could have easily scored on her with one well placed kick from midfield. But the Sounders dominated so much that wasn’t going to happen. Things will be different when they start played the regular season. But first another couple of exhibitions, one on Friday.
I haven’t walked around Green Lake every day, but I’ve managed to do so most days since I realized a couple weeks ago that my weight was climbing toward 200. Between the walks and an emphasis on eating at home, I’m down to about 186 lbs. Eight pounds lost in two weeks ain’t bad.
Where stuff will get difficult is when I hit 180. I’ve dropped to that amount a number of times in the last 10 years, but always start having trouble from then on. Ideally, I’d like my weight in the 170 to 175 range, and it’s been a while since I’ve been there.
This morning the National Archives released the census schedules for the 1940 census. 72 years after each census, the government sends all that information into the wild. For a genealogist, this information is gold. Right now all it’s not searchable. In order to find someone in the census, a person has to know where they already are. Either that or stumble on them among the 132 million records released in image form. Which isn’t completely impossible. I ran into one relative while looking for another. But if you don’t know where they are, it’ll be a huge fishing expedition. Over the next few months, a few genealogy sites will be creating indexes and it will be searchable before too long.
Luckily, I know where a few people would have been in 1940.
Unfortunately, the main release of the records was a disaster. Archives.com is operating the official National Archives site, which is the only site that had all the records for the public, releasing them at 9 a.m. The site promptly fell over. It wasn’t until about midnight I could access any census schedules on it.
In the meantime, Ancestry.com, myheritage.com, and familysearch.org all got a hard dump of the images at 12:01 a.m. They’ve been putting them up since then, but it takes a bit of time to get them prepped and tagged by location. Ancestry loaded up Washington, D.C. first so they could tout that they found F.D.R.’s census record. Then they added a few territories and Nevada. I assume that’s because those places are sparsely populated and they could test their systems for classifying and loading the images. Then they added Indiana and Maine. Most of the family I’ve researched lived in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Washington in 1940. However, I did find a couple of distant relatives in the first couple of states. They are now working California, New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island.
FamilySearch is loading their states in a different order. I don’t remember what they’ve done, but when I first looked they had Colorado up. As a number of great great aunts and uncles in the Ryan branch moved to Colorado from Wisconsin. I was able to find all of the Colorado ones because either they lived in a small rural area that was easy to scan through, or they hadn’t moved since the 1930 census which gave me an address for them.
I haven’t yet looked at what MyHeritage.com has loaded up.
Around midnight, the official site got something working, and I could use it to access Washington records. I decided to look for Otto, Othelia, and Vera Hallin, my grandmother and her parents. I knew Gram grew up in Snoqualmie, and it’s not a huge place: two census districts comprising 44 images total. Pretty easy to scan through. I was slightly worried they hadn’t moved there by 1940. However, Gram was 11 by then, and she didn’t talk about spending a lot of time in their previous house in Skykomish, so my guess was they were already in Snoqualmie.
The first enumeration district I looked at (17-183) didn’t have them. It did have Otto’s brother Sivert Oman and his family though. I’m not surprised to find one of his family in the same town. They were all loggers mostly and Snoqualmie was a logging town.
Otto was on page 6 in the second enumeration district for Snoqualmie.
Otto, Othelia, and Vera Hallin in the 1940 census
Did I learn anything new about my grandmother’s family? Not really. But I do get to fill in details of their lives. I didn’t know they’d lived at least briefly in Everett. One set of columnns asked where folks lived in 1935. I’d always assumed they went from Skykomish straight to Snoqualmie. Othelia’s occupation is owning and running a restaurant. I only vaguely recalled that. From his job at the lumber mill, Otto made $1,740 during 1939, which is about $27,000 in 2010 dollars. Othelia doesn’t report any wages for her business; presumably any profit didn’t count as wages. Otto was either sick or got some vacation or leave, as he only worked 48 weeks out of 52. Othelia worked all 52 weeks.
And now I need to lay off the genealogy for a couple of days, as I have stuff to do.
