Culinary Discovery!

Quick post. I had my friend Robin over for supper and made a rather delicious salad (among other dishes). Anyway, I liked it enough that I figured I’d post the recipe online.

Frange’s Spinach Salad of Doom

Secret ingredient: spicy candied pecans!

Start by melting around 1/2 cup of sugar in a saucepan with 2 tbsp of sambal oelek. Once the sugar is melted, place 1 cup of pecan pieces into the saucepan and stir until they are evenly coated. Remove from the heat and place onto wax paper to cool, separating them while they are still warm (so that you aren’t left with a single, giant, spicy omni-pecan).

The rest of the salad:

• a decent amount of fresh spinach
• around 3/4 c. of grated asiago cheese
• 2 cups cantaloupe, cut into small cubes
• 6-8 green onions, chopped

Add the pecans and toss with the dressing. Serve!

Dressing:

• 1/3 c. light olive oil
• 1/3 c. balsamic vinegar
• 1-2 tsp. prepared mustard (preferably Dijon)
• Sugar, salt and pepper to taste

Photo Post

Well, here are the promised photos from the mr. keith-themed birthday party that reberk and I hosted last weekend. More are available on jpraadt’s flickr page. Also, thanks again to Jaime for documenting our hijinks.

RFP

Yo!

After a weekend of sweet party-times (a weekend which extended to Wednesday, thanks to Canada Day), I’m getting back into something of a regular schedule… save my sleep cycle, which is still irredeemably wrecked.

In addition to the parties, the Jazz Festival has also been going on, through which I’ve seen some pretty good shows, including Wil Campa, Alice Russell and Jimmy Cobb. Tonight, I’m going to be introducing Delirium – a jammy jazz band from Denmark. If anyone wants to come along, I’ve got a free spot on the guest list. Just contact me via any of the regular channels.

PS I’ve been somewhat blue lately… I think that this can be credited, at least in part, to sleeping less than adequately and at less than optimal times. I should really try to scale back my bedtime to something more appropriate. Goal for this week: reset my circadian rhythm. Sleep 1am – 9am daily.

Falling Mainly in the Plains

I’m currently up north visiting my folks.

I made a pretty delicious supper for my Dad yesterday (butter chicken, spicy red curry rice, coconut rice, and a potato, cauliflower and pea curry). Since I missed Mother’s Day, I’m going to be cooking for my Mom today… Meal plan: mulligatawny soup, fresh naan bread, and my patented avocado explosion (which reberk has been the guinea pig for a couple of times). The only difference is that I’m going to be serving the avocado dish with homemade gnocchi, which I’ve never made before. Should be fun.

Everyone here is doing well… I had some good kitchen hangouts with my mom while preparing supper (where we discussed various things, including my back-up plans (in light of the fact that I might not be teaching in the fall)). Also, after supper, my parents and I talked a bit about their honeymoon, which consisted of camping at various locales while driving from Saskatoon to Vancouver (where my Mom had her first job as a dietitian). Crazy fact: not only was their place in Vancouver the first time that they lived together, but they were also twenty-two and twenty-three (respectively) when they got married. Yep. My Dad was married to my Mom when he was five years younger than I am today.

I’m getting old. I have errant hairs growing on my shoulders. I’m concerned about a decline in my neural plasticity, as I’m not as “quick on my feet” (intellectually-speaking) as I used to be. I get lonely. Sometimes I worry that these things make me less lovable.

It’s raining.

Emo.

[Note: Don't worry... I haven't totally transmuted into some sort of sullen sad-sack. I've just been kind of blue for the last couple of weeks. I'm sure I'll shake it off soon enough.]

Summer time, eh?

Hi.

It’s 2:45 AM and I can’t sleep.

My emotions have been at kind of a low ebb lately (yes, I know it is redundant… is it even possible to have a high ebb?). Summer time makes me feel lonely and, once I’m already vulnerable, all of my other concerns and neuroses can just dogpile on. It’s daffy.

The funny thing is that as much as I’m lonely – as much as it would be really nice to cuddle up to someone, to smell their hair and revel in the feeling of my bubble of personal space temporarily dissolving – I don’t even know if I want a relationship right now. I just don’t know if the (significant) risks and detriments are worth the time, effort and emotional commitment. Taking the last few weeks out of the equation, I tend to be a really happy person with very few needs that are not being met… I just don’t know how my life would have to change in order to admit a romantic relationship, and I must admit that I find the thought of that change somewhat daunting. How much of my happiness would I have to compromise? My cost/benefit analysis is proving impractical due to a dearth of data.

Regardless, the fact that I’m made of meat means that sometimes, even when I have rational objections and caveats, I’ll feel things anyway…. It is highly inconvenient. So, my current long-range emotional forecast includes loneliness and yearning, though I hope for some sunny periods as well.

Oh yeah: something for the personal improvement file. I’ve been making an excuse to walk around with out my shirt on as much as possible in the last couple of weeks. For those of you who don’t know, I have some fairly deep-seated body image issues, so this is kind of a big deal for me. Even though I know that I’ll never be a svelte fashion plate, as I have far more in common (morphologically speaking) with my confederates in the lumpenproletariat, I also know that I need to get over this shit. If people don’t want to look at me, that’s at least partially their problem. If I don’t learn to accept myself, there’s no good reason to assume that anyone else will.

Whee!

Edit (insertion):

It is now 3:30 AM. I just had a shower and am still as awake as ever. I know I should lie down in bed, but I really feel like going for a walk. Actually, I really feel like talking to somebody, but, unfortunately, it is 3:30 AM.

Thinking about my previous comments as I showered,  I realized that I come across as something of a mewling, atavistic man-baby (”Boo hoo! My last relationship went poorly and now I don’t know if it is worth the effort! I just want to hang around with my friends and have fun!”) In my defense, however, I must note that the rules of the game (the “game” here being biological existence) are changed a bit when sex isn’t a primary motivating factor, as is the case for me. In this kind of framework, the costs and benefits of relationships are radically reconfigured, as sex is not, in and of itself, a sufficient condition for seeking companionship. I don’t want sex… I want to be intimate with a specific person and in a specific emotional context. Thing is, that takes time and energy and effort, and I just don’t know if I have the gumption right now.

Man, I would not bet on me in a Darwinian lottery.

Dessert Social!

Belated post!

Two weekends ago, Mr. Keith and I hosted a dessert social, which, I’m glad to say, turned out rather smashingly! He wrote a very nice description of the event here, talking about both the general atmosphere and my extemporized speech. As always, good food and good conversation were shared by those present, though I think my favorite part of the evening was when, after going for a walk, the few remaining guest and I shared sundaes and then all fell asleep for a few hours on our kitchen floor.  It was a very agreeable (albeit somewhat atypical) bonding experience. Regardless, I will conclude by reiterating the central point of my speech: I feel very fortunate to know the people that I do.

Also, kudos to The Great Moa for recording the evening for posterity:

Note to self: dessert parties are different than regular parties, in that the leftovers aren’t actually food… As much as it was delicious, I’m sure that eating my homemade apple pie for breakfast on a couple of subsequent days wasn’t a very good decision.

The Nukes Are Coming? (Part I)

So, Saskatchewan is in kind of a pickle, at least as I can see it. Our provincial government has preemptively decided that we *need* more power and that the best solution to these electrical woes is nuclear energy. Rather than opening this question up to public debate (or even consulting with qualified, impartial experts), they convened a group called the Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) to prepare a report concerning various aspects of the “uranium value chain,” including “exploration and mining; upgrading; power generation; used fuel management; research, development and training.” This organization, whose membership consists of (among others) the CEOs of Bruce Power, Cameco and Areva (all uranium mining and/or nuclear energy companies), has no interest in looking into any other energy options; their commitment to the nuclear industry is totally (and  unquestionably) transparent. The viability of other options (in particular, various renewable technologies) has been utterly ignored in our government’s headlong rush to turn Saskatchewan’s future over to nuclear power companies.

What’s funny is that their proposal is so objectively flawed, on so many levels.

Environmentally, the proposed power plant(s) will waste considerable amounts of water, will produce nuclear wastes (which will have to be stored somewhere in Saskatchewan), and, worst of all, will be used primarily to supply electricity to the Alberta tar sands! Though proponents are trying to use this final fact as a selling feature (i.e., since we will be generating extra power, our province will be able to sell it! It’s a new revenue stream for Saskatchewan!), anyone with any concern about the environment knows the devastating effect that the tar sands are having upon Canadian ecology… Do we really want to invest billions of dollars in order to become part of this problem?

Amusingly enough, the proposed plant is also dreadfully fiscally irreponsible. The UDP report talks about how the construction of a nuclear power plant will increase Saskatchewan’s economy by ten billion dollars during the course of its construction… This sounds very desirable, until you realize that this “increase” actually refers to governmental expenditures, which means that this ten billion dollars is going to be coming out of tax revenues… This is not difficult math. Our province is home to one million people; is the construction of a nuclear power plant really worth ten thousand dollars to every man, woman and child living here? Would it not at least make sense to look into other, cheaper options? Rather than tying ourselves to another non-renewable energy technology, wouldn’t it make sense to become innovators in renewable energy, especially at a point in history when such expertise could become *extremely* valuable? As manufacturing jobs flow out of the first world, we are thrust into what has been called a knowledge economy… why not focus our energies on developing knowledge that can be of broad practical use to the entire human race? Even if you don’t find this idealistic talk compelling, it remains the case that the nuclear technologies proposed are expensive, untested and unwieldy. Moreover, the ten billion dollar estimate is likely undershooting the mark by a fair margin, as it fails to account for the fact that we will likely need to replace or upgrade much of our power transmission infrastructure… As Sask Power notes,

The SaskPower system, as it currently exists, is not designed to cope with a large nuclear plant.

Once again, this is another reason that nuclear power doesn’t make sense for Saskatchewan: we have a decentralized population base. It would make far more sense to invest in a series of smaller scale (renewable) power sources distributed throughout the province, as that would not require the overhauling of our entire power transmission infrastructure.

The fact that there is neither a compelling economic nor financial rationale for this decision is truly galling. This is not a partisan issue; nuclear simply does not make sense for Saskatchewan (save, of course, for the members of the UDP (i.e., the CEOs of nuclear power companies)). If our government does succeed in selling off our future, I wonder how much it will cost? What is thirty pieces of silver in today’s currency, Mr. Wall?

Anyway, please join me tonight at 7pm @ the Travelodge, as today (Monday June 15th) is our chance to talk to members of the UDP and express our concerns. Though these meetings have received less-than-favorable reviews, with attendess claiming that those present were unable to respond adequately to relatively basic concerns and questions, I still think it is important to stand up and be heard. That way, if our elected government chooses to ignore its constituents, we will have the moral high-ground necessary to condemn them for their hypocrisy (not to mention their meretricious relations with the nuclear industry).

Homework (for extra credit): Dr. Bill Adamson’s report on the potential difficulties with this proposed project; the Saskatchewan Environmental Society’s report; and these three excellent blog posts.

SaskPower maintains more than 156,000 kilometres of power lines,
52 high voltage switching stations and 182 distribution substations
– these stations help deliver the power to Saskatchewan homes
and businesses. SaskPower’s network serves a large geographic
area and widely-dispersed population. About three customers are
supplied per circuit kilometre, while most North American utilities
average about 12 customers over the same distance.

But What Does It Mean?

I had an interesting experience as I was waking up this morning.

In my dream, I had been sitting in a darkened berth in a yacht, which happened to be owned by one of my family’s oldest friends, an old gentleman named Ralph (who is now deceased and who never owned a yacht). All of the sensory components of this illusory experience were tremendously clear: the cedar smell of the boat’s planking, the slightly rough texture of the blanket under my back. Suddenly, a beautiful woman entered the cabin, the light behind her white-blonde hair transforming it into a halo that encircled her small oval face.  She was wearing some kind of silky, dark-colored robe (or perhaps a kimono). As she began to walk towards me, I could feel myself starting to wake up – an unfortunate and disappointing turn of events, to be sure. As my eyes opened, I could see the dim reddish display on my alarm clock… 7:20 AM.

Now here’s the interesting thing: in my semi-conscious state, I lay my head back down, closed my eyes, and decided to will myself back into my dream – something that I would not have even attempted had I been fully conscious. A scant few seconds after my head hit the pillow, I was back in the cabin, as if no time had passed whatsoever. The nameless woman, without saying a word, leaned in and gave me a long, heart-breakingly slow kiss, reaching her hand up to my cheek. As I placed my hand on top of hers, the air between us changed… small glowing globules of tremulous light began to appear, obscuring her face further. Within seconds, I lost her in the fog and woke up again.

As I awakened, I realized that during the first part of my dream, my vision was entirely clear of the bothersome visual artifacts that have been clouding my eyes for the last two years, and that in the second part of the dream the dissolution of my imaginary tryst was tied to a reassertion of my day-to-day vision problems. Interesting. I wonder what (if anything) it means… Maybe this is my subconscious telling me that I see myself as damaged goods, and that I think that I’ll only find someone when I cure myself.

Regardless, it was still a very pleasant dream… I hope to revisit this ship sometime in the near future.

Note: when selecting the video, I figured it would be more polite to subject you to Bobby Darin than Ms. Carey.

The Secret Ingredient

I know that I’ve posted in the past about my “relationship wishlist” (i.e., the qualities that I’d hope to find in a future partner). But in retrospect I realize that such speculations represent something of a failure to introspect… to think about what I can do to make myself more attractive to the opposite sex.

Fortunately, I’ve now figured it out. I need Mandom:

If I’m ever as happy about anything as Charles Bronson is to be putting on that cologne, I’ll consider my life to be a success.

RV

In re-reading (and editing) my previous post, I noticed an unconscionable number of grammatical errors and awkward constructions. Yikes. As Mike Patton queries his listeners in RV: “Would anyone tell me if I was getting stupider?”

This might seem like a ridiculous thing to say, but it’s been a low-level concern of mine ever since I started suffering from (thus-far-unexplained) neurological symptoms several years ago. Any time that I can’t do something as well (or as effortlessly) as I used to be able to, my first impulse is to assume that it’s because my brain is slowly falling apart.

Whee!