Cleaning up my computer

http://cache.valleywag.com/assets/resources/screenclean.swf

Damn you petfinder

"Do you like my picture?"




Pamela Patti - (Female)
Breed: Coonhound Mix

Age: 5 Years
History:

Description: I'm Pamela Patti. I was named for 2 special ladies, so you know that I'm doubly special. I am not at all pushy or aggressive. If you just want to sit with me and pet me, that is quite enough. I'm not too excited about doing all that running around that so many puppies like. I'm just a nice young lady. I could probably be fully house-trained in short order. I still do puppy things, like drag my blankets all over. There are no cats that I've seen, but I am not the chasing kind of girl, I don't think. I live with Rosemary (her picture is here too), and we have fun together. It is quiet here, and so I don't know about cars and traffic, but I'm willing to learn. Almost every day I get a cooked soup bone that keeps me busy for a while. If I lived with you, would you have soup bones there? Do you like my picture? I could be some kind of coon hound, or maybe some beagle, but no matter what, I am just soooooo cute! Will you come visit?

Breathe new life or spend time searching?

Circle A cycles repairs and repaints bikes; they also handbuild some really great custom frames. I sent them a bad picture of the bike and some details and they estimate around $100 for the repair and $300 for a complete repaint (one color only).

There seem to be no available good Peugeots on Ebay or any of the craigslists right now and I imagine the Mt. Airy Bike Shop will tell me their PX-10's will run me around $600-$750. So I can wait and see how long it takes to find another cheap Peugeot frame with geometry I like (could be never) or send the frame up to Providence for some work and a new lease on life.

Of course the best part would be picking the new color scheme....check out Circle A's Gallery for some ideas. I welcome suggestions in the comments section!

Democratic Debates

This debate is really weirding me out. Both Hillary and Obama are mostly attacking the Republicans, which is presenting them like allies. Now, don't get me wrong, I like that they are being (more or less) nice to each other, but we have to decide between them...don't we?

Last week's New Yorker article on the two of them by George Packer is pretty insightful, I think. It gets the tone of each campaign right on. Obama speaks and you float away on hope, inspired. Hillary is uber-practical, defensive, and full of pertinent facts.

Ooh Wolf just tried to call Hillary naive! He's been doing this all night, saying 'isn't that a swipe at you, Senator?'. Can we not make some real news out of this debate and its content rather than instigating fights?

Bye

Bike's dead. Bent too much to be worth trying to fix. Where do I find another PR-10 my size for 60 bucks?

The bike is not OK

Rear triangle is bent to the (bike's) left. Shit.

Bike!

Rode my (geared) bike to work today! First time since the accident.

Julia's Stew for when times are bad

Cold War Spy Beef Daube

Marinate 3 hrs (or 6 in fridge):
3 lbs lean stew beef
1.5 cups red or white wine
2 tbl olive oil
2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp thyme/sage
1 crumbled bay leaf
2 cloves mashed garlic
2 cups thinly sliced onion
2 cups thinly sliced carrots

simmer 1/2 lb bacon cut into 1" x 1/4" x 2" strips in water, 10 minutes, drain and dry

mix:
6 oz sliced mushrooms
large can chopped tomatoes (drained or not)

preheat oven 325

drain meat in strainer, get plate of flour

layer in casserole:
2 bacon strips (why 2? they are so small. who knows)
veggies
floured beef pieces
more bacon
repeat

pour in wine from marinade and add stock to cover. simmer 3-4 hours in lower 3rd of oven, skim fat.

I like the lackadaisicality of this recipe. You can also add 1/4 cup gin OR brandy OR vermouth to the marinate. Serve with mashed potato or some kind of potato and some green vegetable. Whatever you want!

Shows - Beach House Papercuts

Thursday February 28th
BEACH HOUSE (cd release show)
PAPERCUTS
DIAPENSIA
The G-SPOT
2980 FALLS ROAD
Doors open at 8pm/ Show at 9pm- ALL AGES
buy ticket

Beach House is from here and they get a lot of blog press. I find them kinda eh, but the Papercuts have one or two good songs on a pretty decent album. I tried to go to this same show last year and at first thought I was seeing a leftover ad for 2007, but no I think it's for real, since the 28th is really a Thursday.

Terrible Band Name

But on first blush, an truly excellent dreamy alt-country band from the Cities. Plenty of steel guitar to get you through those cold winter nights.

www.myspace.com/romantica/

New Music

Have stumbled across some fun new music recently.

Bishop Allen

Broadcast 2000

Nina Nastasia - at the Black Cat Jan 31st.

Daniel Johnston is at the Ottobar February 24th too. And at the Black Cat the 23rd.

Removable Wall Art

Edith and I have this big wall in the living room that is hard plaster and a section of which is occupied by our bikes and a coat rack. It is so white and bare and not hip! But you can't hang anything up without possibly ruining the wall! WHAT TO DO?

The answer came to me in an email. I have some cool tshirts from Threadless, and they also do some of their designs as bliks. "What is blik?" you might ask.

They use fancy flash things to prevent me from really adding the photo here but click here for an idea. We are putting some birds in the living room and some Damien Hirst spots in the kitchen. I am doing some Eames circles in my bedroom cuz that's waaaay cheaper than getting a chair. And I don't have room.

Precipitous

For a moment just now it was sunny, with a bit of snow filtering down. Now we have a direct wind from the north and the clouds have turned the sky white. Good thing I have already dropped off the dry cleaning, restocked the fridge with orange juice, and purchased a cappucino from the surly staff at Donna's. I can now stay in the rest of the afternoon in my slippers, battling GIS software and heating up the last of the braised red cabbage - it is SO GOOD.

Dad says he has made something called Unctuous Potential. It sounds a little on the icky side but am sure it is delicious. After all, anything that must be served with mashed potatoes cannot be too bad.

Ah yes. The snow has come to a halt. I guess last week it was 70 and the daffodils that Edith planted started pushing up. Will be interesting to see if they put themselves on hold until the next warm spell or if they will keep reaching out into the freezing air with reckless abandon.

Boston Market Pot Pie

It was ok, not great. It had green beans and corn and was quite a big pot pie, I could not finish it. Better than Marie C but the crust, while sort of flaky, was not as good as Stouffers. Also it burned on the bottom. Incidentally, when googling for an image of this pot pie, I found an outdated link to something called 'barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu'. Yikes!

Pot-Pie-Off

For many years I have been happily consuming Stouffer's chicken pot pies. For New Years Eve dinner Vic and Jason and Laura and I got some Marie Callender's pot pies which were pretty terrible. Now is born the great Pot-Pie-Off of 2008, pitting Pepperidge Farm against Boston Market. I will keep you posted.

Red Cabbage with Chestnuts

When it's cold and you've been gorging on holiday food for two months this is what you need. I didn't have any porcini but it didn't matter and saved me an hour!

Measure Ingredient
2 ounce Dried porcini mushrooms; soaked
3 tablespoon Extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium Onion; minced
2½ pounds Red cabbage 1-medium; cored and shredded
1½ cup Dry red wine
1½ cup Vegetable broth
2 tablespoon Red wine vinegar
¼ teaspoon Freshly grated nutmeg
½ teaspoon Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 pounds Chestnuts; parboiled - I used one 7.5 oz jar of chestnuts from Giant, also HUGE TIME SAVER. Definitely worth the $10.50.

1. CHESTNUTS: Parboil for ten minutes, and remove the outer and inner skins. Soak the MUSHROOMS in warm water for 1 hour. Reserving the liquid, drain, rinse, squeeze "dry" and mince the mushrooms. Filter the liquid and set aside.

2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

3. In a heavy 3-quart oven dish that has a tightly fitting cover, heat the oil and saute the mushrooms and onion for 5 minutes over low heat, stirring frequently until the onions are soft and buttery. Stir in the cabbage and Cook for 10 minutes. Add the wine, broth, vinegar, nutmeg, salt, and a generous grinding of peper. Cover and place in the oven for 2 hours. Make sure that the liquids are not cooking too fast; if so, add more broth.

4. Gently stir in the chestnuts and cook, covered, for another hour or until the cabbage is tender and most of the liquid absorbed. Adjust seasoning and serve.

SERVES 6

New Art

In Bamako I got a painting from Bama Toure, cousin to Malik, and with grandparent Xmas money I got a stained glass window hanging from Steve on Chestnut Street in Hampden that I'd been eyeing for a while.

Christmas Eve food

We made super yummy Creamy Shrimp Grits with Prosciutto along with some fried oysters and smoked salmon for Christmas Eve dinner.

I heart Canadians

Canadians, they love me! This reinforces my sense that I am actually a good person. I have a very worthwhile hangover today after the 'wheels-up' party last night where I somehow managed to impress a key Red Cross person with my extensive political-malaria knowledge. After a week of low-grade wtf-am-I-doing-here this was very nice. The Canadian photographers and writers are also totally groovy. I think we will have a little love-in this evening before everyone leaves. I fly out 3am tuesday morning and will miss this crew - they are super duper.

I should point out that none of the girls in this picture are really Canadian, but they are all AWESOME.

Back from Segou

Campaign is going pretty well though some places have already run out of nets. The clinics were asked to send in population estimates before getting trained on how to do population estimates, and in many areas where we've visited there are a lot of migrant workers, who are not counted in the census. The first two or three places we visited did have nets but the 'advanced' and 'mobile' sites, served by health agents on motos and in 4x4s, were out as of yesterday. Both teams were taking down names and in a followup campaign after Tabaski (starting Saturday), the redistribution is supposed to take effect and people will gets nets sent over from other districts that had overestimated the need. Fortunately women and kids are still showing up for the vaccines, deworming and Vitamin A, and in places where nets are out things are much more calm. Crowd control was a not a major part of the health agent training and so of course there's a lot of crowding. In some places police were called in to help out. There's not always shade for everyone in line and so tempers can flare easily.

Today Ruth Riley from the WNBA and Diego Gutierrez and Dwayne DeRosario gave bball and soccer clinics, and then demonstrated how to use a mosquito net before handing out (not quite enough) nets to all the kids. Somewhat hokey but they will have nice images for fundraising, bully for them.

Off to take the Admiral shopping now...my commission at Ahmed's is getting huge!