Dave and Virg's Adventures in Pittsburgh

Dave's Top 10 Films Of 2010

2011-02-27T10:21:00.003-05:00

Yes, it's time for the long-awaited Dave's Top 10 Films Of 2010 list! This year, Virg and I saw pretty much everything. First, a few honorable mentions:

Most Over-Rated Movie of 2010: I Am Love. It sucked through and through. 2 hours of artsy fartsy sap and scenery, utterly devoid of characters or plot.

Favorite Fun Movies of 2010:
Kick-Ass (great premise, with a hilariously lethal little girl)
Despicable Me (cute, clever, and great use of 3D)
The Other Guys (great opening hot-shot cop sequence spoof)
Easy A (very clever dialogue, and Emma Stone is great as the lead)

Dave's Top 10 Films Of 2010
Now for the real list. I've done my best to describe these movies without spoiling their endings. Which was difficult, because there were some great endings this year, and I loves me a good ending.

10. Buried
Ryan Reynolds trapped in a coffin for 90 minutes, with only his cell phone to save him. The entire movie takes place in the coffin. No flashbacks or fantasies. You never see anyone but Ryan Reynolds, and half the time you don't see anything at all. It was a lot like watching 127 Hours, except you didn't know how it would end. And like Black Swan, the movie really messes with you, finding the perfect ending in the final seconds.

9. A Solitary Man
Michael Douglas gives a good performance as a not-so-likeable guy, who you become increasingly sympathetic for. A smart movie with good dialogue, made more interesting by a small twist.

8. The Town
Ben Affleck was excellent as writer, director, and star of this intense bank-robber story set in Boston. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time, but disappointed by the cheesy ending.

7. Toy Story 3
Sadly, we only saw it in 2-D, as a rental. I wasn't crazy about Pixar's first Toy Story, and I thought the second one was pretty dumb. Last year's Up was 10 very moving minutes followed by 80 minutes of somewhat entertaining silliness. Toy Story 3 was similar, but saved the 10 good minutes for the end of the movie, delivering some surprisingly haunting footage.

6. 127 Hours
The true story of a guy whose arm gets trapped under a boulder in Canyonlands, and who escapes 127 hours later by amputating it with a dull knife. Before the movie had even started, Virg was cringing at a preview of a movie about people trapped in a cave, and I instantly regretted dragging her to this. When the hero first falls in the canyon, you realize just how absurd it would be for him to cut off his arm. The movie does a great job of walking you to the point where you understand his desperate act. James Franco is wonderful, and the script is fantastic. And yes, I covered my eyes for the amputation scene.

5. Animal Kingdom
If The Town was a glorified look at the life of bank robbers, Animal Kingdom seemed like the real thing. It's an Australian movie about a young guy who is taken in by his seemingly sweet grandmother, and 3 criminal uncles. The movie feels distant and spacy, as the main character is increasingly caught between the police's attempts to make him their star witness, and his loyalty to his increasingly mistrustful family. The final resolution makes for an excellent ending.

4. The King's Speech
The story of King George VI struggling to overcome a terrible stutter. Colin Firth is fantastic (and my pick for best actor), as is Geoffrey Rush, and the script is excellent.

3. Barney's Version
As soon as we left the theater, we were ready to see it again. Paul Giamatti stars in this very clever, very funny, and very touching film. Rosamund Pike is great as his love interest, Dustin Hoffman is very funny as his father, and Minnie Driver is hysterical as his cartoonishly awful wife.

2. Blue Valentine
Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are both phenomenal in this complex relationship study. The movie alternates between telling the story of a single day in their married life, and telling their back-story, with an absolutely heartbreaking ending. This great script and its very human characters leave much food for thought. Were they good for each other, and who was to blame for their troubles? Typically, Virg sides with the wife, whereas I found the husband more sympathetic.

1. Black Swan
Darren Aronofsky wrote and directed this brilliant psychological thriller--a surreal behind-the-scenes look at ballet that is part Wrestler and part Pi. Like Animal Kingdom, it's about a good but weak character needing to find strength. It put us on the edge of our seats from the very beginning, and the final 15 minutes of the film are absolutely chilling. It's one of those movies you continue to analyze for days afterward. And Natalie Portman is truly perfect in it. This is my pick for best picture, best director, best actress, and best screenplay.

Sweet Potatoes

2010-10-21T13:22:00.000-04:00

My FarmVille: Week 23

2010-08-13T19:56:00.000-04:00

My FarmVille: Week 22

2010-08-06T15:14:00.000-04:00

My FarmVille: Week 20

2010-07-23T14:22:00.001-04:00

The first ripe tomato has arrived:

The first sunflower opened:

The first (and still only) pumpkin is now bigger than my head:

The corn cobs are plumping up:

The first butternut squash appeared:

The first pickler looks about ready to throw in the brine:

As always there are more garden photos in our gallery.

My FarmVille: Week 19

2010-07-16T14:54:00.001-04:00

Those pole beans are climbing so fast I can hardly reach the top of them. The butternut squash vines on the sidewalk trellises are getting pretty big too.

We have our first zucchini!

This pumpkin is growing very quickly as well. Hopefully this year we can carve a full-sized design on it.

Ready to eat this week are green beans, zucchini, broccoli side shoots, beets, and carrots.

My FarmVille: Week 18

2010-07-08T08:46:00.002-04:00

The peas are done. No, really this time. I got a few more handfuls off the vines this week but they are really slowing down.

You can see the garlic drying over there on the table. This week I pulled 17 heads out of the ground along with 10 bunches of shallots. This is my garlic harvest, about to be pureed in olive oil for convenient cooking:

The green beans and cucumber vines are rocketing up the trellis (behind the umbrella), and we now have a few tiny beans and cucs coming forth. The corn tassels are pouring out of tiny ears, and we have our first pumpkin (now bigger than my fist):

More garden pics are in our photo gallery.

Grilled Quiche

2010-07-07T20:20:00.004-04:00

When it gets this hot (94 today) you'll do anything to not turn on any heat generating appliance, so for dinner tonight I baked a quiche in our gas grill on the back porch.

I just made the quiche recipe as I would for the oven. Instead of my usual glass pie pan, I poured the filling into a heavy square metal baking pan that fits my grill top.

I got out the oven thermometer, lit one side of the grill, and placed the pan on the unlit side, so it wouldn't be directly over the flame.

It took about the same amount of time as it would in the oven and it turned out great! I'm thinking brownies might be the next experiment. :)

Basic Quiche:

6 eggs
1/2 cup cream or whole milk (whatever I have around)
pepper and salt
1 cup chopped fillings (veggies, bacon, etc.)
1 cup grated cheeses

Beat the eggs, cream, and seasonings together, and pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish. Arrange the veggies and cheese over the egg mixture, and bake at 350F for about 45 min.

My FarmVille: Week 17

2010-07-01T15:01:00.002-04:00

Remember last week when I said the peas were about over? Well not so much. The vines look terrible and spotty and brown but the peas just keep coming!

There are a few new things this week...

1) As the fruit was ending, I pruned the currants and made that area nice and neat:

Now I just need to figure out how to dress up the space under the bushes. I'm thinking it might be an excellent place for summer lettuce and a backing trellis of brown-eyed susan vine.

2) I made a new compost pile:

The black bin was not cutting it. Not only was it woefully undersized for the amount of organic waste in my home, but nothing was decomposing in there. I noticed that the pile of old hay stacked up next to it was rotting faster so I made a big pile out of both, and enclosed it in a 4x4 foot wall of cinder block.

3) We have garlic:

The stalks have been getting kinda fall-overy, so I decided to see what state they were in, and Voila! there is a giant head of garlic where a single clove once was... like magic!

4) Imagine my surprise to find this hibiscus bush blooming behind our garage:

I thought it was a tropical plant but it seems to be doing quite well next to the alley.

5) The corn is blooming!

Yesterday the neighbor's landlord came over to mow their grass and commented how surprising it is to see corn growing in the city, and I noticed that the flower had started to open. We are well past knee-high and it's not even July 4 yet. :)

I posted more pics of blooms and tiny fruits growing in our garden in our photo gallery.

My FarmVille: Week 15

2010-06-18T20:06:00.000-04:00

Sadly, the peas are almost over, and there's not a lot else to eat in the garden right now other than herbs, lettuce and baby carrots. The broccoli is coming in very small and the beets and turnips are still nowhere near eating size, so I'm going to be relying on the farmer's market for a bit.

I have currants though:

The mature lettuce plants are getting really tall as I cut outer leaves off:

Good thing the new lettuces I planted a few weeks ago are harvest size. The weather's getting really hot and I predict these old ones will go to seed very soon.

I can't wait for tomatoes. One day this tiny green San Marzano blob will be in my sauce:

My FarmVille: Week 14

2010-06-11T10:55:00.001-04:00

I'm pretty sure it's actually week 14, even though I just posted just last week. I'm getting a few blooms on the eggplant, pepper, and tomato plants in this bed:

I hope the bees come around again. I got another tomato plant yesterday (my 5th--the Sweet Million cherry tom I grew last year that was amazingly productive), but I have no idea where to put it. The herbs are really taking off and spreading out, and I've picked a bit of basil here and there.

The sweet potatoes (under hay) and corn are coming up nicely here:

The sunflowers I planted along the wall (above) are acting as snail bait, because I can't seem to get many to grow much before they get mowed down, giving them belly aches before they get to the other plants (I hope). I also put in another pepper plant right in front there (behind the ginormous strawberry plants in the foreground). That makes 5 pepper plants.

As you can see in the photo below, the peas got really tall and thick, and then fell over.

I'm getting a lot of peas though, so I can't complain. The carrot foliage is growing thicker now, and I've harvested a few more disappointing turnips.

The spinach is at it's end, and I have to decide what to plant there next. I also ate the first head of broccoli and it was pretty good, just very very small, but the buds were opening so I knew it was already mature.

I'm really looking forward to some baby carrots and the next broccoli coming soon.

Road Trip

2010-06-11T10:32:00.000-04:00

The beach is a place I rarely go, which is odd considering I love the water and swimming is one of my favorite physical activities.

Last weekend I arranged to see some of my old buddies from high school and go to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, which I remembered loving from childhood for all the sticky sweets, arcade games and rides, tacky souvenir shops, and silly t-shirts. I was not disappointed:

My FarmVille: Week 12

2010-05-30T17:38:00.002-04:00

There was lots of growth while we were away in Michigan. The peas have overgrown the fence, bloomed, and have already produced some rapidly maturing pods:

The larger broccoli plant has a small head forming (as does the cauliflower):

The squash and zucchini are getting ready to climb the ropes:

And the rose exploded with multiple blossoms:

I put some shades over the spinch plants because they are starting to die off in the heat. I've lost 6 plants in the last week and they're going fast. I had to reseed some new ones in the shady area cause I neglected to arrange watering while I was away last week. Oh well! Time to buy a sprinkler timer for my soaker hoses.

Michigan ain't so bad after all

2010-05-29T20:57:00.001-04:00

We went to Michigan to celebrate the end of Dave's semester and to visit our friends Eytan and Sara and their 10-month-old twins, who moved to Ann Arbor nearly a year ago. We drove there, surprised to find that it's less than a 5 hour drive from Pittsburgh.

Dave gives Avi his first piano lesson:

Virg constructs yet another tower for Maya to destroy:

Virg displays feats of strength after a picnic at the arboretum:

Our next stop on the trip was a cute lake town called Saugatuck on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.

This is the inn we stayed in overlooking the Kalamazoo River:

On our first day there, we attempted to drive to the famous Oval Beach, but the access road was closed and there was no other way to get there. Feeling desperate for adventure, we instead climbed this crazy set of 280+ stairs to see what was at the top:

It turns out that there was nothing but this nice view of Saugatuck at the top. We immediately walked down again, and our calves ached for the remainder of the trip.

A sign at the Dairy Daze creamery asked us to receive our ice cream in waffle bowls for environmentally friendly reasons. This is how it was served:

The next day we went to Sand Dunes state park to try and get to another beach. The trail map indicated we would have a 2.5 mile hike to the beach from the parking lot, but it took less than 10 minutes to get there. We enjoyed this beach on Lake Michigan until the tide suddenly swept up and over the berm, almost sweeping our shoes away. (A "berm" is a narrow ledge or shelf typically at the top or bottom of a slope.)

Kilwins ice cream (which we also had in Ann Arbor) was the best ice cream shop in Saugatuck. Look closely at the photo and you'll see two things: Virg enjoying delicious ice cream and a second Kilwins location across the street.

We enjoyed many loving strolls around town:

Virg glows in the sunset after succeeding in the final attempt to access Oval Beach (named for the oval-shaped parking lot).

MORE PHOTOS

My FarmVille: Week 11

2010-05-20T14:45:00.000-04:00

Lots of growth in the last week. A couple of the tiny marigold plants have miniature blossoms on them:

The squash and cucumber pre-sprouts I put in the ground earlier in the week are coming up. Hello, butternut squash!

Today, I cleared out the bed beside the garage, formed a hill and furrow and put in the sweet potato roots.

Warmer weather is on the way and with it should come some explosive growth. See you next week!

Glorious Spring Weekend

2010-05-17T11:07:00.001-04:00

We got some great weather this weekend, so we got to spend a lot of time enjoying the backyard and taking our weekend visitors around to some of our favorite places in Pittsburgh.

Jen (pictured below) flew in for the weekend, and Amy dropped by Saturday afternoon, so we enjoyed a lovely afternoon of sun basking in our rapidly growing garden, and a walk down Murray Ave for lunch and chocolates. Later that evening we enjoyed a sushi feast at Sakura on Forbes.

Sunday we took Jen around our standard Pittsburgh tour for first-time visitors. Above, Jen is enjoying the view of downtown from Mt. Washington. We stopped at Market Square (which is unfortunately in construction disarray), and toured Phipps Conservatory after lunch at the cafe.

The gargoyle exhibit made it that much more amusing.

More pics here.

Foot sore and feeling peckish, we decided to try a new-to-us ice cream shop in Shadyside called Oh Yeah! which features mix-ins and vegan soy creams. details are on the menu:

Our glorious weekend ended with dinner at the Silk Elephant and the best sleep I've had in awhile.

My FarmVille: Week 10

2010-05-13T13:40:00.000-04:00

Wow! Time sure does fly when you're busy, and I have been very very busy in the yard the last 2 weeks.

I bought a whole bunch of plants from the May Market at Phipps last Friday, and they've all gone into the ground today, hence the row cover shields protecting them from the scalding sun (although there's not a lot of that today). Also, my impatiens and basil plants arrived from Burpee on Monday, so those went into the ground as well.

Here's the rundown on what's going in and popping up...

Transplants:
Little Fingers dark purple Asian eggplant (Garden Dreams)
Snowy white Asian eggplant (Garden Dreams)
San Marzano red paste tomato (Garden Dreams)
Supersweet 100 red cherry tomato (Garden Dreams)
Gourmet Orange sweet bell pepper (Garden Dreams)
California Wonder sweet red bell pepper (Garden Dreams)
Italia red ethnic sweet pepper (Garden Dreams) (got this one last year and it was the most productive pepper I planted)
Rosemary (upright habit) (Blackberry Meadows)
Munsted lavender (Blackberry Meadows)
Lemon basil (2) (Blackberry Meadows)
Thai basil (2) (Blackberry Meadows)
Pesto perpetuo basil (3) (Burpee)
Hot Mix impatiens (12) (Burpee)

Seeds coming up:
I've seen 2/6 corn (planted 2 weeks ago) and 3/8 marigolds sprout out of several seeds (including pickling cucumbers, zucchini, and pole beans) I sewed over the last 2 weeks. Kinda disappointing, but the ground may still be too cold for them to germinate, so I'm starting some more seeds indoors (the cucs sprouted inside in ONE day, so I know those seeds are good).

On the other hand, last Friday I planted a large number of sunflower seeds (Burpee sunflower forest mix) on the south side of the garage and in the crappy sloped area by the fence, and those are coming up really fast.

I also planted some more spinach and lettuce in the shady corner by the garage (where you can see the wire cages protecting the seeds from birds). I figured I better get those going before it gets warm again or germination might be a problem (spinach does not like heat).

The garden is almost fully planted now. There are two more spaces each for summer squash and butternut squash, a straw covered sweet potato patch (still waiting for my bare-roots from Burpee--grrrrr), and a pumpkin patch that are not yet planted. As soon as the yellow squash, pumpkin, and butternut squash seeds sprout in their little plastic bags in the net day or two, they'll go into the ground. I also have one more space for a climbing plant on the trellis, maybe another tomato (can one have too many)?

My FarmVille: Week 8

2010-04-30T16:57:00.000-04:00

This week I mowed the lawn, and did a lot of work on the bed over there by the garage wall.

I tied up the currant branches so they're not laying on the ground, and I put some trellis netting and strings on the wooden frame in back. I removed all of the hay, conditioned the soil, and put down black paper mulch. Finally I installed the 2-tier tomato cage next to the wooden frame.

I planted the Greek oregano and Cosmonaut Volkov tomato plants I bought at the Coop earlier in the week (I also bought a paste tomato plant but it died mysteriously of multiple stem injuries). I also seeded all of the pole beans, a zucchini, and round one of the corn. The celery starts are ready to go into the ground between the broccoli plants, just as soon as the shade gets over there.

The nasturtiums I planted under the cherry bushes started coming up, so that's a relief. I wasn't sure I'd ever see those.

I'm still waiting on some impatiens and basil plants, and sweet potato roots from Burpee, and I'm a bit surprised that some of those haven't arrived yet given my zone. I know...patience, patience, patience. Pretty soon these beds will be all planted up and I can just sit back and watch everything grow.

Calistoga 2010

2010-04-25T15:07:00.000-04:00

The annual post-tax-season family spa retreat has been a great excuse to travel to the Bay Area and catch up with friends, see family, and spend a couple days at work, having lunch with my old buddies, and meeting some new team members face-to-face.

The main event is always the stay in Calistoga at our favorite inn and spa, where we spend 2 very mellow days soaking in pools of hot mineral water, drinking fine wine, eating fabulous food, going for walks/hikes, and finish it off with a deep tissue massage.

This year we went on a hike that took us on the Table Rock trail. It was steep and mainly through a runoff/creekbed which meant a lot of loose rock. Thankfully no one fell and we made it to the outcropping of sharp volcanic rock in 2 hours. Views of the valley were magnificent and the recent spring rains encouraged lots of wildflowers to spring up along the path. More pics here.

My FarmVille: Week 7

2010-04-23T18:25:00.003-04:00

Last week I could have made a progress report, but I was so busy getting ready for my trip (in a post coming soon) that I just let it go. As you can see, the leaves have come out full force since my last post, and the grass is getting pretty shaggy.

Before leaving town last week, in the hay-covered bed, I raised a wooden trellis frame from which the vining plants will hang. In the sidewalk bed, I laid a soaker hose and covered almost all of the bare ground in mulch, so that it would hold moisture while I was away.

The kale is looking mighty big and spikey weird:

These neat flowers appeared on a bush on the side of the house:

Also, some asparagus came up in the front yard:

Foolishly, I bought several baby plants before leaving town last week: cauliflower, English and French thyme, sage, peppermint and spearmint. I saw those cute little plants at the Coop and I could not resist.

Then I figured, what the heck, and planted the marigolds I started indoors a couple months ago in the area under the rose bush, and I put the zinnia starts in the big green planter and moved it under the lilac tree. All my young plants went right into the ground, and thankfully they survived a week of neglect.

This week I planted some nasturtium seeds in the hanging planters, and some dill seed way on the far end of the sidewalk. Also, I filled in some blank spots where carrots, peas, cilantro and a turnip never appeared.

CMU: Year 2

2010-04-17T15:53:00.009-04:00

Apparently, I haven't blogged about my life in a long time, so here's a summary of the past year.

Summer 2009
Graded AP exams for a week. Then spent a few weeks preparing for a one-week workshop on Principles of Computation for area high school math/science teachers. This meant putting together four 90-minute lectures for an audience that wasn't necessarily interested in computer science, so I stressed out quite a bit about how to make my talks relevant to them. The talks were on recursion (not my choice), how computers work (in which I ran over my audience), information and randomness, and cryptography (these last two went very well). In the middle of the workshop, it really felt like the teachers were "getting" that computer science is so much more than programming. Unfortunately, we muddied that message by also teaching programming later in the workshop, and so an overwhelming number of the teacher's presentations on the last day focused on programming.

Thankfully, I've been able to re-use pieces of those lectures quite a bit in the past year, starting with the CS4HS workshop, in which I gave a guest lecture on randomness and then cryptography to an audience of enthusiastic high school CS teachers. I then co-lead a one-week workshop for AP Computer Science teachers. This was a lot of fun, and much less stressful than the first workshop. I was a little nervous, given that some of the attendees had been teaching AP computer science for much longer than I have. But I think the workshop proved to be valuable, even for veteran teachers. I did feel bad for those teachers who had very little Java experience, because it takes far more than a week to learn enough Java to teach the AP course well. (I would love to see the AP exam back off on teaching so much Java, so that more schools could offer the course--especially in lower income areas.)

I spent the last weeks of the summer writing a paper about the high school network protocol course I created. The paper got very positive reviews, so I got to present it at the SIGCSE conference in March. I thought it was really cool to lecture about networking to a big room full of networking professors, when I've actually never even taken a networking course.

In the background of all this, there were a lot of very bad things going on in my department. The dept held a meeting to determine which teaching track jobs to eliminate, apparently putting me in the "maybe" category. Also, I tried to convince my group that we could better serve students who only take 1 semester of CS by teaching them about digital representations, the Internet, exponential growth, etc., instead of emphasizing Java-specific minutia and object-oriented programming. This discussion turned frustrating fairly quickly.

Meanwhile, the department appointed a committee to replace the introductory CS curriculum, and actively prevented the teaching track faculty from informing the process. By a fluke, I happened to be at work one day when my boss was unable to attend one of these committee meetings, and I happened to attend the meeting when the committee was beginning to discuss our CS1 course. I was asked to write a proposal for what I would do in CS1. But my proposal (less programming, more CS, use Python) was apparently not what the committee wanted to hear, and it was mocked mercilessly in the following meeting. In email, I spoke out strongly against the whole process, and was thankfully never invited back again. Nonetheless, sometime in the fall, the committee announced that, starting in the fall of 2010, CS1 will be taught in Python, and will introduce bigger CS ideas.

Fall 2009
I taught CS1 in the fall to four sections of 30 students. With so few computer labs in the Gates building, I was forced to teach in a lecture hall 3 days a week, and have students program on computers just once a week. I decided to use the extra lecture time to present bigger CS ideas on Fridays. These were mostly well received, but were seen as disconnected from the course.

It turns out that the fall semester CS1 students are very different from the spring. Two thirds of my fall semester students planned to take CS2, as opposed to just one third in the spring. This meant that my fall students were much stronger programmers, and much more engaged in the course. I gave large assignments, and my students ate up everything. Overall, I had a blast with that group, I received stellar scores on teaching evaluations, and my students earned the highest average on our common final exam.

And it was at about that moment when my department announced that 9 of my colleagues' contracts would not be renewed, that those of us that remained would soon be teaching 200+ students each semester, and that we would continue to be treated as second-class citizens. Thus, a great semester ended on a big downer.

Spring 2010
In light of the direction my department was moving, I decided to try out teaching larger CS1 sections: two groups of 60 students. I got a killer schedule, with my first class after 1pm. But on the day before classes, a visiting instructor quit. My boss picked up that section, and decided to use my course materials, which was a little stressful for me. Then, in the middle of the first day of classes, I suddenly felt very sick, went home immediately, and ended up going to the hospital, probably with some GI virus. I got sick again a couple weeks later, which luckily coincided with a few snow closings.

It turns out there's a huge difference between teaching 30 students at a time and teaching 60. I tried calling out all 60 names on the first day, but it took so long I never did it again. It took me weeks to learn the students' names, and I wouldn't have learned them at all if it weren't for attending the 30-student recitations and helping students in lab. I delivered lectures in long wide rooms, with the students sitting between me and the doors. My students clearly felt anonymous, and would often come to the first few minutes of class and then get up and leave--something that had never happened to me before. I frequently found students working on laptops, reading books, doing other homework, etc., during class. The students were sitting so far away from me, that they would start up conversations with each other during class, and I often had to stop and ask them to quiet down. I felt like I was just standing at the front of the room speaking as if from a textbook, while my students came and went and ignored me.

Then my boss offloaded his section onto me. So, suddenly I was teaching 180 students, with class every other hour, and managing 11 course assistants. And having barely learned the names of the first 120 students, I didn't even bother learning the next 60. Students would say hi to me in the hall, and I had no idea if they were even in my class. Students from the previous semester would say hi, and I couldn't remember their names.

Not surprisingly, more students meant many more cases of inappropriate collaboration. This drained all my time, and I felt like I was constantly meeting with the students who were blowing off the course, instead of working with the ones who were trying hard and needed help. I began to wish my assignments were more open-ended, so that it would be easier to identify cheating cases. Also, my colleagues kept reminding me of how soft my course was. So, in week 8, I decided to have students program an arcade game. I had done this sort of thing the previous semester, but this time I removed a lot of hand-holding from the assignment: no more examples of test code, no more telling them how to break down each task into simple methods, no more providing method signatures. For the first third of the course, very few students had come into lab for help. But on this assignment, the lab was absolutely packed. Stopping by lab, I felt like I was walking through an impoverished third world country, with 50 students in a 30-student lab, every seat filled and students sitting on the floor everywhere, every hand up and desperate, saying, "Dave, just one thing. Just one quick question ..." The lab was still packed even a couple days after the assignment was due, with so many students still struggling to finish it. And although the students scored very well on the following quiz, morale had sunk to the point where I lost my class, and I've never really won them back.

About 20 of 180 students have dropped the class. Those that remain are becoming very strong programmers. I still don't know names in one section, and they hate me. As usual, the sections that meet later in the day are going much better. At this point, we've got one more assignment to go, and then this bad semester will come to a close. I'm hoping for some better news on the final exam, but I expect very little from evaluations.

Annual Mix CDs

2010-04-17T09:42:00.008-04:00

For a long time, I've wanted to create a mix CD at the end of each year with the music I got into that year, largely as a way to remember the music and events of my life. However, it's always seemed daunting to figure out if I got into a song this year, or was that 2 years ago, etc. So a few months ago, I made a big spreadsheet, went through all my CDs, tried to remember exactly where I was living and what I was doing when I got into an album, searched for receipts for music purchases, etc., and I worked out what I listened to in each of the past several years. I've now started making my annual mix CDs, working backward in time. I've avoided putting multiple songs by the same artist on a given CD, unless it was a slow year. The result so far is a lot of post rock and Batman music:

2009
1. Route 12 from the Revolutionary Road soundtrack
2. Malachite by Jakob
3. The Day Shift by Pg. Lost
4. Ybe 76 by Subheim
5. Taijin Kyofusho by Evpatoria Report
6. A Notion I Can't Shake ... Accidents Happen So Fast by September Malevolence
7. Incirculation by This Is Your Captain Speaking
8. White Seraphs Wild by Immanu El
9. Sapphire by Seabound
10. In Your Room by Depeche Mode
11. Hero by Regina Spektor
12. Enlightened False Consciousness by French Teen Idol

2008
1. Marching Bands Of Manhattan by Death Cab For Cutie
2. Cerda's Plan by Near The Parenthesis
3. Void by Red House Painters
4. Aggressive Expansion from the Dark Knight soundtrack
5. Psiu! Puxa! by Lights Out Asia
6. Define Dancing from the Wall-E soundtrack
7. The Second Nave by Near The Parenthesis
8. Denouement from the Atonement soundtrack
9. What Sarah Said by Death Cab For Cutie
10. The Cottage On The Beach from the Atonement soundtrack
11. Six Points Of Fire by Lights Out Asia
12. A Dark Knight from the Dark Knight soundtrack

2007
1. Analyse by Thom Yorke
2. Outlast By Rain by Readymade
3. Tepid Coat by Damiak
4. All I Need by Radiohead
5. Worst Taste In Music by Radio Dept.
6. Pace Is The Trick by Interpol
7. Soma by Smashing Pumpkins
8. I Remember It Differently by Near The Parenthesis
9. And Triage by Bitcrush
10. The Funeral from the Pan's Labyrinth soundtrack
11. Watching Over You by Seabound
12. Spiti Elfas by Lights Out Asia
13. Mortal City by Dar Williams

2006
1. Pulling Our Weight by Radio Dept.
2. Eptesicus from the Batman Begins soundtrack
3. Medicine Bottle by Red House Painters
4. 10,000 Days (Wings Part 2) by Tool
5. Fair by Remy Zero
6. Sometimes by My Bloody Valentine
7. Alone In Kyoto by Air
8. No Quarter by Tool (a Led Zeppelin cover)
9. Svo Hljott by Sigur Ros
10. Corynorhinus from the Batman Begins soundtrack
11. Let Go by Frou Frou
12. Love On A Real Train by Tangerine Dream
13. A Lack Of Color by Death Cab For Cutie

Due to lack of data, mix CDs before 2006 will probably have to span multiple years.

My FarmVille: Week 5

2010-04-07T15:47:00.002-04:00

What a difference from last week. No more covers on the plantings! Everything is up now (well only 1/2 the chard is up, but that's another story). Leaves are on the once-bare branches, the grass is growing, and the lawn furniture is out.

The parsley seedlings are in, and I put in another round of peas. I also planted some nasturtium under the cherry bushes cause they look pretty ragged, and not a lot of new growth is coming along.

A couple of nights ago an intruder (a squirrel I'm guessing) rooted around in the part of the garden where the chard was planted. Half (4/8 plants) were ruined so I started those over. Someone does not want me eating chard this spring!

Many of the plants (like this spinach) have their 1st true leaves well underway:

More things are happening around the yard. The tulips and voilets are out:

We even have our first dandelion of the year:

(darn Blogger rotated this one on me GRRRRR)

There are more pics of the plants and other things blooming in the yard in our photo gallery.

My FarmVille: Week 4

2010-04-01T07:01:00.001-04:00

From this photo you might think not a lot has changed in the last week, but everything is sprouting now (note fewer cups on the ground), and if you look closely in the foreground under the bare climbing rose bramble you can see I've planted something new there as well (cilantro). Parsley seedlings are hardening off over by the just-now-budding currant canes (upper right).

In the background, on the still hay-covered bed, I've begun preparing some hanging baskets for nasturtiums that will hang from the hooks on the garage wall.

Other new life in the yard includes daffodils springing up everywhere and this bush in the backyard (forsythia?) with the cheery yellow blossoms.

Here are my little spinaches. Hurry up and grow! I'm hungry!

New Toys

2010-03-24T16:07:00.001-04:00

I broke my first head yesterday, so I was forced to go shopping for a replacement. In the process I dropped some cash on a new set of symbols: Zildjian A Custom 20" Projection Ride, 18" and 16" A Thin Crashes, and K Custom Dark hi-hats.

FarmVille: Week 3

2010-03-24T13:53:00.002-04:00

All those plastic cups and boxes on the sidewalk bed are covering (and keeping warm and moist) seeds in the ground waiting to sprout some leaves. There are carrots and beets (planted today), turnips, more peas, a second-round of kale, and some remaining unsprouted lettuce and spinach under those.

I also prepared and set some planters in the shady corner area next to the garage (upper right of pic), where soon I'll plant some flowers and cilantro. Because it's nice and cool there, this area will eventually become my summer lettuce and spinach plot.

Almost all of the seeds I planted out a week or two ago are sprouting now: lettuce, spinach, a couple first-round peas, first-round kale, and some pre-sprouted turnip seeds I planted in the last few days.

The chard is not up, partly because I messed up the plot while working on another area, so I'm starting over by trying to pre-sprout some seed inside.

I was getting impatient with the slow germination in the cold ground, so this past week I decided to try pre-sprouting indoors and planting the seeds just as they were breaking open and the first root was coming out. The turnips and kale both responded very well to this plan. The second-round peas are going slow but enough have sprouted to transplant today, and I'm still waiting on that chard. :(

I also planted out my broccoli babies just before the cold rains came on Sunday night. They seem to be taking well to their new home:

I got a late start on my parsley and cilantro indoor starts, but some sprouts are finally coming up in the egg cartons, so those will likely go out next week.

The crocuses came and went pretty quickly over the last week, but the daffodils are starting to open, and soon we'll have tulips. So nice that Spring is finally here.

UPDATE: slow chard seed finally sprouted so that'll go out in the morning. We'll have a full bed very shortly.

Week 2

2010-03-16T14:20:00.002-04:00

In week 2 there's not a lot of obvious change except that the snow melted away completely and I took the plastic off the sidewalk bed to let the sun in during the day.

Today I decided to start round one of the snap peas on the first fence there, and I put in a couple Red Russian kale seeds as well. I'm not sure the kale will germinate in the cool weather though.

None of last week's seeds have sprung up yet, but I did see a spinach seed on the surface sending a little root down, so I quickly sprinkled some dirt on it.

However, all of the garlic bulbs sent out new growth (and the shallot shoots are greening up too):

Around the front and back yard there are other signs of life: day lilies, tulips, crocuses, and daffodils are coming up, I think I see tiny wild blue violet plants here and there, and the pussy willow is in furry bloom:

Here's hoping there will be some more green stuff next week.

In the Ground

2010-03-11T13:03:00.002-05:00

Gambling with nature goes outdoors! The first seeds went into the ground today:

lettuce (spring mix, butterhead, romaine)
spinach
chard
bunching onions (pre-sprouted)

Hopefully these will stay protected in my makeshift greenhouse until the chance of a hard frost has passed.

Also, the broccoli sprouts were overtaking their little peat pellets so I made these cool little origami pots to transplant them into:

Growing Season 2010: Week 1

2010-03-09T15:43:00.001-05:00

This year I will attempt to keep a record of the changes in the garden throughout the season. I thought it would be fun to take a photo from the same spot each week, so that the changes in most of the yard can be seen.

Today I've removed the straw cover from the bed by the sidewalk and the section behind the garage where I planted the garlic and shallot bulbs last fall.

The shoots are looking pretty sickly, but hopefully some air and sunshine will improve them. I also noticed some daffodil shoots coming up in the front yard.

I've constructed a little "greenhouse" over the sidewalk bed, using a large 10x20 foot plastic tarp, and the pea fences provide the support.

After the soil warms up under the plastic for a couple of days, I will start planting the early spring crop: lettuce, spinach, and chard.

My FarmVille

2010-03-05T17:31:00.001-05:00

A couple of celery sprouts came up overnight. I planted these Feb 22nd along with the broccoli that came up so fast. 12 days ain't bad, right?

Here we have the little sprout farm setup with the sprouting terrarium and the egg cartons, with potting mix and extra vermiculite stirred in for water retention (according to the Square Foot Gardening book).

The sprouts in the foreground are the broccoli (which have grown quite large) and the two celery (there are supposed to be 8 total) that finally appeared.

The bulk of the egg carton cells contain bunching onion, marigold, and zinnia seed/sprouts. The onion seeds are new this season so they're germinating just fine. I've had a 50% success rate with the 2 year old zinnia seed (3/6), and much worse results with the 1 year old marigold seed (5/18).

I didn't mark the one marigold variety that did come up successfully (there are 3 varieties sewn in there: Burpee's Yellow Boy, Chameleon, and Scarlet Starlet), so I have no idea which packet is producing results. Oh well...I threw some Yellow Boy in the empty cells so we'll see if those are the winners. Plenty of time to get this going right?

Lost and Found

2010-02-27T07:57:00.001-05:00

These two little guys showed up on our porch Thursday morning. We fed them, and then the neighbors fed them, so they were hanging out on the porch next door all day.

The neighbors said they were probably going to keep them so we left them to it, but I saw the kitties out there again Friday evening as the snow was blowing around. One of the neighbors said the landlord didn't want to allows cats, but he's thinking of letting them keep them anyway. They're still trying to convince him, so in the meantime the cats are living in our basement so they don't freeze to death.

UPDATE:
The next-door neighbors took the cats home, inside, and are probably keeping them.

Our First Sprouts

2010-02-24T09:28:00.003-05:00

I don't care what the calendar says, Spring has officially started in our house! Only 2 days after planting, these little broccoli babies have sprouted, and the zinnia are pushing up as well.

Chicken Curry with Chopped Carrots and Tomatoes

2010-02-21T19:48:00.000-05:00

I made this tonight to try something different. It's based on a recipe in _1,000_Indian_Recipes_ by Neelam Batra, and tailored to our dietary requirements. Serves 4 (or 2 really hungry people).

1 lb chicken pieces, cooked and diced
2 Tbsp coconut oil
4 carrots, sliced
2 cinnamon sticks, broken in 1/2
6 cardamom pods
1 1/2 cups diced tomatoes
1 Tbsp ground coriander seed
1 tsp ground cumin seed
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp dried Kasoori methi (fenugreek) leaves ground fine
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp paprika
1/2 t salt
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup plain whole milk yogurt

saute the carrots, cardamom pods, and cinnamon sticks in the oil until the carrots are tender (about 5 min)

add the tomatoes, and the remaining spices, salt, and water.

cover the pan and cook for about 20 minutes.

uncover the pan and cook down the liquid to a desirable level for the gravy.

remove the cardamom and cinnamon, and stir in the chicken pieces to heat them up.

remove from heat and stir in the yogurt just before serving.

To make this vegetarian you could sub in paneer for the chicken, or anything you like really..tots, beans, potato kefte, etc.

You could also use onion in place of the carrots, and add some garlic and ginger for more flavor, but we're avoiding onions and garlic right now so that's why the carrots are there instead.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

2010-02-21T16:39:00.000-05:00

Zucchini Muffins

2010-02-17T20:13:00.000-05:00

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm

2010-02-16T09:41:00.000-05:00

THIS is Snow

2010-02-06T08:43:00.000-05:00

More

Triple-Threat Chocolately Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

2010-01-21T10:25:00.001-05:00

No that title does not have any extra "Chocolate" in it...they are all in there I promise. I made these yesterday, and man oh man, they are the best thing I have ever baked...warning! you may not be able to stop eating them!

Thick and Chewy Triple Chocolate Cookies
(from The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book)

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup dutch-processed unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs
2 teasoons instant coffee
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
10 Tbsp (1 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter softened
1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
16 oz semisweet (~60% cacao) melted and cooled
2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips

2 baking sheets
3 bowls (2 med, 1 lrg)

Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment (or use a silicone liner which I did and it worked fine)

Whisk the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt in a med bowl.
Whisk the eggs, coffee, and vanilla in another med bowl, until the coffee is disolved.

In the large bowl cream the butter and sugars with a mixer (set on med-ish speed), until light and fluffy (3-6 min).
Beat in the egg mixture, until just combined, about 30 sec.
Beat in the melted cooled chocolate, until just combined, about 30 sec.

With mixer on low speed slowly add the flour mixture, until just combined.
Stir in the chips (I could not get my mixer through the dough much less get any chips into it at this point so I just added them to inidivdual cookie balls later).

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Cover the bowl of dough and let stand at room temp, for about 30 minutes, until the dough is the consistency of scoopable fudge.

Working with 3 tbls of dough at a time, roll the dough into balls (and squish in the choc chips), lay them on the baking sheets about 2 inches apart.
(The shape doesn't change much during cooking, so I would recommend flattening them just a bit, and you can lay them a bit closer together.)

Bake for 10-15 min (I needed 15) until the edges of the cookies are set (and a cooked crust is formed on top).
(The cookies will not bake through but remain raw inside until cooled.)

Let them cool on the baking sheet for about 10 minutes (moving them will be impossible because they are practically liquid inside).
Eat them!

If you want just a few fresh cookies at a time, spread out over a few days, you can freeze the rolled cookie dough balls and bake them frozen whenever you feel a craving (they just need a few extra minutes in the oven). I did this for breakfast this morning and it was delightful!

Actual Best Movies of 2009

2010-01-19T14:19:00.002-05:00

Here are MY picks. These were definitely the best 10, but the order of the list is approximate.

10. Avatar - Yeah, it's kind of dumb. But the experience of watching it is amazing. And you don't realize it's dumb until you've seen the first 2 hours and 15 minutes.

9. Up - I was so moved after just 10 minutes of this movie. Admittedly, the rest was uneven, but it was always either loving told, or dopey but with funny talking dogs.

8. An Education - A very smart story, that pits school learning against life experience, without easy answers. Oh, and it turns out it's a true story--including the most implausible parts.

7. A Serious Man - A Coen Brothers movie that doesn't really have any point or ending, but it was very smart and very very funny.

6. District 9 - Realistic and smart Sci-Fi.

5. Precious - Impressively unmanipulative. Superb acting. You start to feel what it's like to be hopelessly uneducated.

4. Inglourious Basterds - Brilliant script. A real nail-biter, though. Has you cheering (uncomfortably) for vengeful Jews to inflict atrocities on the Nazis.

3. Up In The Air - Very smart script. Sort of romantic comedy. But sort of something deeper, in the spirit of American Beauty.

2. Hurt Locker - Masterfully crafted film about bombs defusing in the Iraq War. The script was written by a guy who was embedded with such a bomb defusing squad. The movie was shot just a few miles from the Iraq border, and the film crew was actually shot at during production. The whole thing is super intense, and incredibly real. One of the movies that tells you its message in the first 4 words of the film, and then makes you forget it completely until the last couple minutes.

1. (500) Days Of Summer - A very enjoyable, very funny, very heartbreaking, insightful look at a troubled relationship. I know it doesn't feel like a best picture, but it's definitely my favorite of the year.

Still haven't seen: A Single Man, Crazy Heart, Invictus, Moon, Good Hair.

Best Movies of 2009

2010-01-15T12:21:00.001-05:00

It's awards season once again, beginning with the Golden Globes airing this Sunday on NBC. Dave and I will order the traditional extra-large pizza and settle in for glitzy red carpet pre-show so I can pick apart everyone's outfit, followed by hours of manufactured suspense. I can't wait. :)

I haven't seen a lot of the "best" movies out there, and I've got only a couple more days to complete the best picture nom list for the GG, but I feel compelled to publish my own list of the Best Movies of 2009 while the thought is in my head and the time is available.

10. Adventureland - I'm a sucker for angsty coming-of-age stories set in the 80's.

9. The Hangover - Hilarious bachelor party movie where everything goes horribly wrong in the most spectacular possible way.

8. Food Inc. - This movie was pretty much preaching to the choir with me, but I thought it was a very informative, well edited film in that didn't need to resort to extreme measures to make its point.

7. Star Trek - I was really excited to see the Star Trek franchise resurrected, and this prequel didn't disappoint. OK, so some of the time travel stuff was a bit hokey, but remember it's Star Trek! It's not supposed to be brilliant.

6. Precious - I was afraid to go see this movie. Everything I'd heard about it was that it was so heartrendingly awful to watch what happens to the title character that you'd leave the theater a quivering heap. I thought it was an uplifting story, it feels very real, and there's no tear jerking.

5. Up In The Air - Can emotionally unavailable men mature enough to accept sticky entanglements? Apparently they can, but only for unavailable women.

4. A Serious Man - This movie made me laugh out loud. Louder than I have laughed in years. Several times.

3. Hurt Locker - Think you can handle stress? Not in this job! Amazing cinematography in an extremely realistic setting.

2. District 9 - Gritty, original sci-fi morality tale with aliens and spaceships. woo!

1. (500) Days of Summer - Sexy Zooey Deschanel and all-growed-up Joseph Gordon-Levitt captivate in this fascinating anti-love story. I had to see it twice. I can't wait to see it again. The score and sound track are awesome too.

Honorable Mention (in no particular order):

The Informant - Matt Damon in a 'stache...'nough said.

I Love You Man - Very funny Paul Rudd bro-mance. But I love any movie with over-the-top vomit scenes.

Whip It - Ellen Page is just so adorable. She can do no wrong.

Julie & Julia - I'm a big Julia fan and Meryl Streep captured her perfectly.

An Education - Nick Hornby writes an exceptionally seductive screen play. The true story is even creepier. read about it.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - The Harry Potter franchise gets darker and smarter.

Up - Pixar does it again.

Watchmen - Nicely done comic hero flic.

Avatar - OK, it's dumb, but the flying is way cool.

I realize that this list is missing some "important" films that I just didn't get around to seeing, but really want to catch sometime in the not-too-distant future... The Invention of Lying, Moon, Inglorious Basterds, Invictus, The Road, Sherlock Holmes, but this is as good as it gets for now.

Huge Scary Icicles

2010-01-11T14:26:00.000-05:00

These formidable stalactites have formed from the mini melts each afternoon.

Shepard's Pie

2010-01-10T07:51:00.002-05:00

In winter I'm a big fan of one pot meals, and this one (adapted from a Shape magazine recipe) fits the comfort food craving without being too heavy.

Turkey Shepard's Pie

Serves 4

2 lbs potatoes (3-4 med size), peeled and cut into small pieces
1/4 c low fat sour cream or plain yogurt
1/4 c low fat milk
2 scallions, chopped
4 tsp olive oil
small onion, 2 small carrots, and 2 celery stalks, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb ground turkey breast
1 tsp each, dried thyme and oregano
28-oz can diced or crushed tomotoes, with juices
salt and pepper

1. boil and mash the potatoes with the sour cream and milk, then blend in the scallions. they should be thin enuogh fo spreading over the top of this dish...if not, add more milk. set aside.

2. heat 2 tsp of the olive oil in a large skillet, and saute the onion, carrots, celery, and garlic until tender. remove and set aside.

3. preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

4. heat the reamining olive oil in the skillet and brown the turkey meat. as it cooks add the seasonings.

5. return the veggies to the skillet, and add the tomatoes and bring to simmer. cook until the liquid is nearly evaporated.

6. pour the turkey mixture into a deep 9-inch pie pan or casserole, spread the mashed potatoes on top, and bake until the top is slightly browned and the filling is bubbly, about 12-15 minutes.

Man and and his tower

2010-01-07T09:42:00.002-05:00

Slow-cooked BBQ Brisket and friends

2010-01-05T09:02:00.002-05:00

Before I get on to topics in the new year, I need to disgorge some old year items that have been waiting around.

Christmas itself was quiet, and we stuck to our go-to-the-movies/eat-Asian-food tradition. We got ourselves a couple of new Wii games (Sports Resort and Super Mario Brothers). Sports is more enjoyable, and my favorite game is Frisbee golf right now. I would like to appreciate table tennis more, but our TV is too small to handle the split screen in 2 player mode.

Being the Golden Globe nomination season, we saw a bunch of movies toward the end of the year. Among them were Precious, Up in the Air, and Avatar 3D. Precious was bleak but uplifting, and had a realness about it that gave it its power, rather than being emotionally manipulative. Up in the Air was a hope tease but had a great script and great acting. Avatar was visually stunning but sort of dumb (what would you expect from James Cameron).

Before leaving for our NYE vacation we got to cat sit a couple of new furry friends for a few days. They are very cute and friendly, but they move much too fast for photos. However we have many photos of our own guys enjoying the holidays here:

For NYE we met up with my parents and Texas relatives for a couple of days in colonial Williamsburg. I LOVED this place as a kid and I was very excited to see it again. Of course everything seemed much smaller this time, and being winter it was pretty cold and the gardens were not pretty. But with the gray skies and fog you felt like you were transported back in time in a Brigadoon kind of way. Plus, this time around I appreciated the history lectures from the tour guides much more. I'm looking for a fun to read American Revolution history book if anyone has recommendations.

(these swords and hundreds more, and LOADS of guns, decorate the walls in the governor's palace-more pics)

After Williamsburg, Dave and I spent the weekend in Charlottesville, trying our best to be tourists in the bitter cold. Dave was very excited about finding items with my name on them everywhere. Fortunately we had a very nice hotel room, because the morning of our departure I became violently ill and we had to stay an extra day.

On that note, here is some excellent food I made earlier last month:

Slow-cooker BBQ Brisket

1 whole brisket, trimmed of fat
1 cup chicken or beef broth
bay leaf

BBQ sauce ingredients:
1 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup ketchup
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2-3 cloves garlic minced
1 tsp dried basil
fresh ground pepper (about 1/4 tsp)
(liquid smoke and cayenne pepper would be nice additions that were not available to me at the time)

1. Brown the meat on all sides.

2. Pour the broth in the cooker and place the bay leaf and brisket in it (you might have to cut your meat in 1/2 if you have a small cooker).

3. Mix the sauce ingredients and pour on top of the meat, leaving a nice thick coating.

4. Add some cut up potatoes on top if desired (they absorb sauce and taste rather yummy).

5. Cook for 6-8 hours on Low until the smell is driving you mad with desire, and the meat is pull-apart tender.

6. Bribe your mate with BBQ to get him eating sauteed kale on the side.

Ice Castles

2009-12-23T11:39:00.001-05:00

Today we have some beautiful ice formations from the melt following last week's snowstorm:

Images of the Season

2009-12-23T11:23:00.005-05:00

Hanukkah-mobiles are seen all over Squirrel Hill during the holidays:

Big breakfasts keep us warm:

Egg Nog French Toast With Blueberry Syrup

Syrup:
1 cup blueberries
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup maple syrup

Simmer over med-low heat while cooking the toast.

French Toast:
4 eggs
1/3 cup egg nog
1/2 tsp each, cinnamon and nutmeg

4 slices stale bread (or toast it very lightly to dry it out)
1-2 tbsp butter

Mix the eggs, nog, and spices thoroughly, and soak the bread in the batter. Then fry the bread in butter until the bread is cooked through.

Second Snow

2009-12-23T11:21:00.003-05:00

These are from last week's big snowstorm:

First Snow

2009-12-05T14:35:00.003-05:00

The Littlest Potato

2009-11-30T13:38:00.006-05:00

More on that little potato in a moment. First I want to do a recap on happenings around here:

Thanks, New Jersey, for welcoming us for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and for sending us home with a car-load of leftover food.

Turkey Soup:
1/2 onion chopped and sauteed in olive oil, then add
2 celery stalk, 2 carrots, 2 potatoes, diced
2 cups chicken broth + 1 cup water
1 tbsp dried parsley, 1 bay leaf, 1/2 tsp thyme
2 cups chopped cooked turkey
1 cup cooked wild rice

I cooked the sauteed onions, herbs, and veggies in the broth until the veggies were tender (about 20 minutes), then stirred in the meat and rice to heat them up.

Mr. M helped me inspect my winter gear before the cold descends. Unfortunately, it still isn't cold enough to get really bundled up.

Today I'm slow cooking the remaining tiny white turnips and carrots from the final CSA delivery of the season, and a chuck steak and bag of fingerling (literally finger-sized) potatoes from this month's Penn's Corner Farm Alliance farm stand.

This tiny little purple potato was in the bag:

In the cooker today we have:
1.5 onions, chopped
1 lb bag fingerling potatoes (yellow, red, purple)
1 lb bag baby white turnips
4 carrots, coarsely chopped
3 lbs chuck, cubed, trimmed, browned
1 tsp thyme
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp salt
lots of fresh ground pepper
1 cup broth + 1 cup water
2 tbsp dried rosemary liberally sprinkled on top

I'm letting that cook for about 6-7 hours on low, and when it's done, scoop out the meat and big veggie chunks, leaving the onions, little chunks, and juices to puree for sauce.

Go Bucks!

2009-11-21T11:52:00.000-05:00

Fortune Cookie

2009-11-11T10:05:00.003-05:00

Chicken and Roots

2009-11-08T11:03:00.003-05:00

This slow cooker experiment came out pretty good:

5-ish lbs carrots, baby turnips, and red-skinned potatoes cut into bite sized pieces
1 bay leaf
1 tsp salt
ground pepper to taste
1/2 tsp dried ground thyme
1 tsp dried rosemary
1/4 tsp dried ground sage
1/4 tsp dried ground marjoram
1 cup chicken broth
1 chicken cut into pieces (with skin on)
olive oil
2 cups tomato puree

I placed the veggies on the bottom of the cooker, sprinkled them with all the herbs, salt and pepper, and poured the chicken broth over that.

Then I rubbed the chicken pieces with olive oil, and placed them on top of the veggies. The breasts I left together connected to the sternum in one large piece and put it in skin side down.

Last I poured the tomato puree over top of the chicken and cooked it on Low for 8 hours.

I removed the chicken and veggies from the liquid, and reduced it to make about 2 cups of gravy to serve with the meal. This could go well with some sauteed greens, or other green veggies.

The Best Card Ever

2009-11-07T13:55:00.001-05:00

Peace in Pittsburgh

2009-11-05T11:12:00.003-05:00

On the afternoon of All Hallows' Eve I went on what was billed as a spooky tour of the largest and oldest cemetery in Pittsburgh. The guide wasn't all that knowledgeable, and the stories weren't very frightening, but the cemetery is full of interesting structures and history.

Allegheny Cemetery was opened in 1845 and contains more than 100,000 memorials. The grounds cover 300 acres and contain about 15 miles of trails. The oldest graves are from the French and Indian War, and the cemetery is still growing.

Some notable residents include Lillian Russell, Don Brockett (Chef Brockett on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood), John Baptiste Ford (founder of PPG), Stephen Foster, Thomas Mellon (founder of Mellon Bank), several US Congressmen, generals, and Pittsburgh mayors.

More pics here.

Boo!

2009-10-30T12:42:00.000-04:00

Slow Cookin'

2009-10-28T16:37:00.004-04:00

It's the first slow cook of the season!

2 lb chuck roast
5-10 sun-dried tomatoes chopped
handful dried oregano and basil leaves
bay leaf
salt and pepper
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic, cloves sliced
3 cups tomato puree (from our own vines)

1) seared the roast in the pan, and put it in the bottom of the cooker

2) sprinkled sun-dried tomatoes, oregano, basil, bay leaf, salt and pepper over the meat in the cooker

3) fried the onions and garlic, poured that over the meat in the cooker

4) deglazed the pan with tomato puree and reduce by 1/3, pour over meat in the cooker.

5) cooked on low for 8 hours

6) OMG I'm losing my mind WFH while slow-cooking smells fill the house....when can we eat!

Fallingwater

2009-10-18T09:05:00.002-04:00

On Saturday Paul and Hilary took us to see Fallingwater. I vaguely remember stopping there as a kid on one of our many road trips to the east coast, but had no solid memory of the place.

According to Smithsonian Magazine this is one of the 28 places you should see before you die, in the "Triumphs of Vision" category.

I did not expect the place to live up to all the hype, but it is a very interesting structure. Built right into the stone on the bank of Bear Run, just above the waterfall, the stone colored concrete terraces jut out over the rushing water as if they'd been carved there by the constant flow.

The more impressive views of the house are from inside of it, where you can see that all of the construction and furnishings are not only in harmony with each other, but perfectly coordinated with the fall foliage seen from nearly every wall in every room of the house. That October is the highest tourist traffic the place sees now makes sense to me.

The large horizontal ledges formed by the terraces are repeated indoors everywhere you look: in the levels of the floors of the home, the piled shale stone work with larger pieces jutting out from the walls, and wood shelves that grow right out of the stone. The flagstone floors remind you of the creek bed over which you are perched.

The main floor is an open plan similar to the modern houses we seem to prefer with connected dining, living, and office areas. Only the kitchen is hidden away behind a well-concealed door in the dark corner behind the massive stone fireplace.

The bedrooms are small by today's standards (the house was constructed in the late 30s), but there's a ton of storage in the smooth built-in walls of wardrobes, the integrated wooden shelves, and many times the stone walls themselves provide a niche for an objet d'art.

Frank Lloyd Wright made nearly every aspect of the house "client proof" by integrating all of the furnishings into the structure, rendering them unmovable. The tables, shelves, wardrobes, headboards, lighting, seating, are all rooted in the floors and walls in a continuous flow so that his vision couldn't be easily reinterpreted.

While I don't think my life has been changed by the experience, it is a really neat place, and I'd be happy to take any of our visitors to Fallingwater.

Fortune Cookie

2009-10-13T15:09:00.000-04:00

Rorschach Cats

2009-09-28T11:24:00.001-04:00

Summer's End

2009-09-22T11:42:00.006-04:00

The skies are gray, the leaves are collecting in the gutters, and the cats are napping closer together.

The daily tomato crop is winding down, the pumpkins are bright orange, the carrots and beets have been harvested, and the compost pile is growing rapidly.

The garage is stocked with peat, compost, and hay mulch to put the gardens to bed for the winter, as soon as the plants die off.

The gardening books are out, the spreadsheet is open, and I am deciding what to plant next year, building cold frames, and designing pea/cucumber trellises.

The hot soup is comforting, and I'm daydreaming about slow-cooked meats and baked goods coming fresh out of my oven, filling the house with pleasant aromas.

The best cooking class ever

2009-08-28T11:10:00.003-04:00

Last night was the pizza class at Enrico Biscotti company in the Strip. We started with introductions, house-made red wine, appetizers, salads, and pasta with meatballs around a big table.

Then Larry took us through his entertaining version of the chemistry (millions of yeast cells eating sugar and having sex) and history of bread-making (starting with the Egyptians, then hot Greek girls making big beautiful loaves resembling Demeter's breasts, followed by hot southern Italian girls picking weeds (herbs) to make the mouldy wheat taste better, and finally Regina Margharita is presented with the first pica margarita at the port of Naples).

Then we proceeded to the kitchen where we watched a pizza dough-making demo complete with tips on the best ingredients and techniques for getting an even thin crust with no holes. We then worked our own dough balls into beautiful thin crusts, topped them, and baked them in the blazing hot wood-fired stone oven. In the meantime lots of sweets came out of the bakery for sampling. You don't go home hungry!

Are Pumpkins Weeds?

2009-08-20T15:11:00.002-04:00

The pumpkin vines have gradually taken over the southwest corner of the yard, completely overrunning the ornamental garden and covering the fence. I can see three fruits taking shape.

AC Entertainment

2009-08-19T11:48:00.002-04:00

This little feller came home with me after this weekend's visit to the Carnegie museum complex.

Jen came over from Columbus for the weekend, and it was another hot sticky one! So we did our best to entertain her in air-conditioned environs. This included:

- seeing movies Hurt Locker (gripping!) and 500 Days Of Summer (again)

- eating at restaurants (Saturday: Square Cafe lunch, Thai dinner with local friend Sylvia; Sunday: Coca Cafe lunch, Aladdin's dinner)

- going to the Carnegie museums to see art and dinosaur fossils

Does "hurt locker" mean anything?

Fortune Cookie

2009-08-14T12:27:00.003-04:00

Curried Zucchini and Tomato Soup

2009-08-13T16:36:00.005-04:00

Are you sensing a trend? Well I had some veggies left from the last CSA box and I got a new one yesterday so I had to deal with the veggie overflow. This turned out pretty good.

1 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 Tablespoon curry powder (Madras blend)
1 lb zucchini, chopped
1 lb tomatoes, peeled and chopped*
3-4 cups chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Saute the onion and garlic in the oil until softened.

2. Add the curry powder and toss to blend. Saute it for a bit to marry it into the onion.

3. Toss in the zucchini and coat it with the curried onions. Saute for a few minutes.

4. Add the tomatoes, broth, and salt.

5. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

6. Puree the soup, and enjoy it topped with some chevre or yogurt.

* Peeling tomatoes is not too cumbersome. Just make some small cuts into the skin at the bottom, and cut all the way around the stem end. Toss them into boiling water for a minute until you see the skin begin to pull away. Take them out and let them cool a bit before slipping the skins off.

Curried Carrot and Fennel Soup

2009-08-13T16:14:00.003-04:00

I hate licorice, and fennel has a mild flavor like that so I'm not a fan. However I hate to let food from the CSA box go to waste, so I came up with something palatable after a Google search for recipes.

1 onion, chopped
2 fennel bulbs, chopped
6 carrots, chopped
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 tsp curry powder (garam masala)
1 tsp ground coriander
2 cups chicken broth
1/2 cup milk or cream
salt and pepper

1. In a large pot saute the onion, fennel, and carrots in the olive oil

2. Add the spices and saute a little bit to marry the flavors.

3. Add the chicken broth, bring to a boil, lower the heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

4. Puree the soup, and add salt and pepper as needed.

5. Just before serving whisk in the milk/cream.

Pickles

2009-08-13T16:06:00.004-04:00

I've been getting a bunch of cucumbers lately from the CSA box, and I'm not a big fan of cucs, but I love dill pickles (and they're so easy to make):

First, slice the cucumbers lengthwise into spears (I like mine pretty narrow so I make 8 spears out of each cuc).

Then stuff as many as you can into a glass jar. If you're using a jar about the size of a pasta sauce jar (about 20 ounces), add the following ingredients to the jar in these amounts:

Salt: 1 tablespoon
Garlic: 2 chopped cloves
Dill: a whole bunch chopped up (about 2 teaspoons of dried dill)
Vinegar: 1/4 cup

(make adjustments if your jar is a different size)

Last, fill up the remaining room in the jar with boiling water. Let it cool down before putting on the lid and marinating in the fridge for at least 2 days.

Busy, Busy

2009-08-13T15:47:00.004-04:00

It's been a busy busy couple of weeks. I'm not sure where the time went but there was a lot of working and cooking going on. I'll post some recipes in follow-up posts.

Dave's Aunt Jeannie and Cousin Lynn came by from NJ for a visit Sunday afternoon. We tried to ignore the heat on Monday, and took them to see the view from Mt Washington, gave them a CMU campus tour, and then a very humid walk through Phipps Conservatory before saying Uncle and having a lovely air-conditioned dinner at Bravo followed by a screening of Julie & Julia.

I am a big fan of Julia Child. My mom and I watched her show when I was young (I think it came on after Lilias Yoga and You on PBS). Mom gave me her Mastering the Art of French Cooking when I started to appreciate finer foods (she wouldn't part with her copy). And now this movie was brilliant!

Unlike many of the reviewers I enjoyed the character of Julie, perhaps because I strongly identified with her. So many times in my life I've been uninspired by everything happening in my life, but cooking something yummy with the best, freshest ingredients I could find/afford brought me joy.

Even the shopping for the ingredients was part of the fun. I loved the scenes in the movie of Julia shopping in the Parisian outdoor markets gasping and cooing with delight at the wondrous array of produce on offer. I was so inspired by the movie I made Julia's Chicken Fricassee recipe on Tuesday night along with some fresh corn on the cob.

SPOILER ALERT

The thing about the movie that I didn't like much was the part where Eric walks out on Julie...I mean this guy was so supportive and patient all along it just seemed totally out of character for him to not come back after a couple of hours, and not even call to let her know where he was.

Happy Birthday to Love

2009-07-28T03:46:00.006-04:00

Our third wedding anniversary went by last week without a lot of fanfare. This time we decided to see the new Harry Potter movie which I think is very appropriate, because I fell in love with Dave while he read Harry Potter books to me.

A heartfelt and reciprocated love brings a certain power of transformation, which is pretty much unique in the world. Dave has the unique ability to inspire me to try to be my best self, and not just when he’s nearby. He encourages me in my more constructive passions and brings out my better qualities. He makes my weaknesses apparent, so that I can learn and grow, but doesn’t reflect them back at me. Our relationship is passionate in just the right places and calm in others. It’s not perfect, but it has all the right ingredients. This is what I believe true love is.

Attack of the Killer Tomato Plants

2009-07-25T14:03:00.003-04:00

They're almost as tall as I am now.

A LOT of growing happened while we were away on vacation.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

2009-07-23T11:45:00.006-04:00

We spent the past week roaming from Erie, PA, to Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON, Canada. We meant to get up to Toronto but the Niagara area was so nice we just couldn't leave. Pictures here.

Erie, PA was a big letdown. Our hotel was very nice (possibly the best hotel on lake Erie), but the city itself (the third largest in the state) appeared to be economically depressed, and downtown Erie was not the quaint place I was expecting. In fact I felt rather unsafe there even in broad daylight. Also, our visit coincided with the annual Roar on the Shore motorcycle rally, making downtown non-navigable. However we found Presque Isle State Park very pleasant and spent a lot of time there.

Niagara Falls impressed me more than I expected. We started on the US side, parking on Goat Island in the Niagara Falls State Park, and walking from the wet and windy Horseshoe(Canadian) Falls side of the island to the calmer American Falls.

After checking in to our hotel on the Canadian side to dry off, we walked down to the falls viewing area, only to get drenched again as we approached Horseshoe Falls. At first I was impressed by how ridiculous everyone looked in their brightly colored ankle length plastic ponchos, but after fighting the mist/rain and wind I saw the wisdom in this fashion.

The second day in Niagara Falls we took the Maid of the Mist tour boat that gets you as close to the bottom of the Horseshoe Falls as you can go without drowning, and where you are surrounded by the semicircular wall of roaring water. I wish I had some pics of the view down there, but the mist cloud was raining heavily down on us and I was afraid to get the camera wet.

We decided to spend our last couple of vacation days in Niagara-on-the-Lake, which is a quaint early 19th century town on the shores of Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Niagara River. We booked a fairly decent B&B, which while comfortable (and featuring jetted tubs), wanted to charge us an extra $20 for the second B upon our arrival. The town's main street had several ice cream parlors, and we dined well there too.

Dining on this trip was varied...

On the road:
Aunt Bee's - truck stop diner on I-79 exit 141, featuring friendly service and hunting/country clutter/bee decor. Cheap but decent, except for the lousy coleslaw.

Erie, PA:
Pufferbelly Restaurant - plain but good food, this restaurant is in an old brick firehouse that still has the fireman's pole and lot of other neat old fire station stuff around.
Perkin's - not as good as Denny's and that's not sayin' much.
Ruby Tuesday - located in the Millcreek Mall (one of Erie, PA's top 5 attractions according to the hotel visitor's guide), this is a decent bar/restaurant similar to TGI Friday's.
Joe Root's - family friendly steak and seafood. good, plain, friendly.
Bob Evan's - The best breakfast the entire trip. You just can't beat biscuits and gravy.

Niagara Falls:
Food court at the US side parking garage - A chaotic, disorganized, "multi-cultural" fast food garbage, but we found a coffee counter that served decent grilled sandwiches.
Buchanan's Chophouse - The Doubletree hotel restaurant. This was the best meal the whole week. Really impressive soup course and satisfying portion of foie gras.
Tim Horton's - these fast food/cafe places are EVERYWHERE. fast and cheap breakfast option.
Passage to India - bland, expensive buffet.
My Cousin Vinny's - friendly but too expensive for what is basically the Olive Garden. Food was rushed so that we were served our main course before we finished the salad.

Niagara-on-the-Lake:
Bistro Six-One - Excellent food, great atmosphere.
Churchill Lounge - Prince of Wales hotel casual dining option. We enjoyed the weather and people watching on the corner patio.
Tim Horton's - cheap, fast, EVERYWHERE
Cows - Rich creamy ice cream. The smell of baking waffle cones outside practically forces you in the door.
Epicurean - Fresh ingredients make the plain offerings satisfying. Nice large patio.
Stagecoach Restaurant - local greasy spoon. nothing special.
Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory - the gorgeous chocolate candy displays draw you in, the Turkish coffee mocha chip ice cream makes you want to come back again and again.

Tiny Tomatoes

2009-07-12T15:10:00.007-04:00

Cute little vegetables are finally showing up on my plants! We have tiny (and not so tiny) tomatoes, peppers and carrots. Still no squash or pumpkins though.

Sunday I went on a walk in Boyce-Mayview Park in Upper St. Clair. This is probably the nicest park in the surrounding area I've been to yet. It reminded me a lot of Rancho San Antonio in the Bay Area. The trip leaders from Venture Outdoors provided some yummy gazpacho and corn bread after the walk. Click here for some pics of the park.

Seldom Seen Blogger Returns

2009-07-11T13:08:00.007-04:00

After all of the traveling about in June, we decided to make the holiday weekend a quiet one. We went to see the July 4th fireworks on the river in downtown Pgh, but didn't have any idea how many other thousands of people would be down there too. So after sitting in traffic for almost an hour, and being directed into the parking garage next to PNC Park, we decided it might be smart to just watch from the top of the garage so we could get out of there fast. Turns out a lot of people had the same idea, and some looked like they'd been tailgating there for most of the day. It turns out to be a great viewing spot, and getting out of the area was relatively painless.

Dave's been busy teaching a workshop for high school science and math teachers this weekend so I've lined up some entertainment for myself.

Friday night I was invited to join my friends down at Sushi Kim, located between downtown and the strip, where we ate Korean BBQ buffet. How that works is there's a buffet of raw sliced and seasoned meats and condiments, and you cook them at the grill on your table. It was delicious and I can't wait to take Dave there.

Afterward we went over to Klavons, a relic of the 1920s, which none of the others had seen before, and enjoyed some old fashioned sodas and ice cream sundaes.

This morning I went on a Venture Outdoors walk through a well hidden greenspace in the community of Beechview. Before the walk an area resident gave a talk about the history of the area and the efforts to preserve this wooded hillside in a fairly densely populated town. The area we were walking in was once called Seldom Seen, and it was a secluded village of German immigrants until the 1960s, when the city took over the property with plans for development.

The trails (if you can call them that) were faint and overgrown. There was so much poison ivy that I spent most of the walk watching where I stepped (why did I wear shorts!). Also, it's not maintained by the city so there are a lot of felled trees blocking the path.

We stopped along the way to hear about interesting features of the park which I've detailed with pics here. When I got home I immediately scrubbed my arms and legs down and washed my hiking clothes in case there was any poison ivy oil on them.

ComFest--Offramp Stage

2009-06-27T00:36:00.005-04:00

(everything you need to enjoy ComFest)

(can you have too much fun?)

(Brainbow)

Garden Update

2009-06-24T10:58:00.001-04:00

Week in Review

2009-06-21T14:00:00.002-04:00

On Tuesday night, the day before the next CSA box, another last minute spinach dilemma was solved by making a quiche. I have yet another pound to dispose of from the current box and I'm running out of ideas. Any suggestions?

I also had a bunch of kale to dispose of so cooked it down and then used these weird ropey things (pictured above) called garlic scapes, some of the fresh oregano, and a can of tomatoes to make a pasta sauce. If more kale comes in the next box I don't know what I'm going to do with it.

Mom and Jim stopped by for a visit Friday afternoon. Jim wanted a penguins shirt so we took them down to the Strip on Saturday morning for breakfast at Enrico's and did some street shopping.

Janice and family stopped by on their way home for a quick overnight visit. Mr. Moustache was game to play with the kids, but Jackie was much more timid.

Somehow Kristina convinced Jackie that she was not too scary. We slept 4 guests in our house on Saturday night, a new record!

Classic Mr M captured by Daniel, a budding photographer.

Day 6

2009-06-14T16:49:00.002-04:00

Today was sunny, warm, and beautiful--a perfect afternoon to watch the Pirates lose at home, or paddle around in a plastic tub on the river. I chose the latter. :)

Venture Outdoors organized a kayak tour of the downtown section of the Allegheny river in cooperation with Kayak Pittsburgh. This trip was a little more special than usual because it was led by one of the city council members and various other players in city organizations having to do with riverfront development and advocacy. At stops along the way we got to hear some history of the riverfront and about ongoing cleanup and development efforts to make the river a more pleasant place to recreate.

Along the way I saw lots of interesting graffiti under the bridges, adorable groups of ducklings and goslings, and a couple of turtles sunning themselves on fallen branches along the water's edge. The downtown views from the water are really spectacular. Next time I'll bring the camera along in the boat.

Days 3, 4, 5

2009-06-13T21:39:00.005-04:00

The week has been fairly uneventful, with the exception of watching the Penguins win the Stanley Cup last night. Today I set off on some adventures.

I started with a morning of shopping in the Strip district, which is historically a wholesale marketplace that now has a lot of retail open to the public. I had a very sweet breakfast of croissant-chocolate bread pudding at Enrico's Bakery and Cafe (pictured above), then progressed through the grungy but charming shops on Penn Ave. More pictures and details are here.

After regrouping at home, I set off on a group walk with Venture Outdoors at Hartwood Acres. The extensive wooded and open grounds surrounding the mansion are a haven to walkers, mountain bikers, and horseback riders. It was a beautiful afternoon to enjoy the outdoors. More pictures and details here.

Day 2

2009-06-10T21:25:00.003-04:00

Just watched the Guy Ritchie film Revolver, which is making my head hurt. This movie seems to be all about Jake Green escaping the imprisonment of his ego, and after thinking about it awhile I'm pretty sure it's also about shooting as many people as possible, and confusing the crap out of the viewer with regard to the other character's motives.

Oh, and the cherry pie was delish!

Abandonment: Day 1

2009-06-09T20:48:00.003-04:00

What do you do with two pounds of mature spinach leaves the day before your next CSA box is due to arrive? Blanch, cook in butter and stock, then add a lot of cheese (and more butter):

(Dave left me for several days of grading AP CS exams, so I feel free to spend hours preparing lactose-intensive meals.)

The strawberries are coming in like crazy now. Several are just rotting on the ground before I can find time to pick them. Tonight's harvest went well with white wine while catching up on the first installment of the Colbert Report in Baghdad (to witness Stephen's head shaving), followed by watching the Pens win game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final (a far too exciting 3rd period).

C-bus Arts Fest and Friends

2009-06-08T12:11:00.003-04:00

Had a whirlwind weekend visiting Jen in Columbus. She took me to a lot of events and hardly let me sleep. It was all worth it to meet all her great friends and hear some good music.

Highlights include:

Friday night, seeing Jen's friend sing with the Boki Quartet at Giorgio Italian restaurant.

Getting our hair styled and toenails painted Saturday afternoon at the Aveda Institue so we could look our best for the Columbus Arts Festival reception, dining on the Barcelona patio, and finishing off the evening with a concert by The Receiver at Skully's.

Tasty Beats

2009-05-29T16:03:00.004-04:00

A couple weeks ago I bought a drum kit to fulfill a lifelong dream. I kept this secret desire to myself until I lived in a place with a basement and no walls shared with neighbors, then I stunned Dave with it shortly before placing the order. I discovered that I am much better at playnig the air drums than at the real thing. Time for lessons?

Fruit

2009-05-28T14:51:00.003-04:00

The first strawberries ripened today! Things are growing so fast this spring it's been hard keeping up. The lettuces are getting up to eating size now too.

Finally finished the brick border on the sidewalk bed, just need to plant things there now.

The climbing roses are coming out with summer color.

Recursive Artwork

2009-05-24T19:50:00.006-04:00

I learned about recursive art at a brief talk at the March SIGCSE conference. After my classes ended, I finally had time to write code to generate my own recursive artwork. Here's a sampling of the pictures I've created.

I think they'd make great CD covers. Or, it'd be cool to get them printed and framed, and then sell prints at art fairs for $30 each. Gotta love recursion...

CMU: Semester 2

2009-05-18T08:43:00.082-04:00

This spring I was 1 of 7 instructors teaching our introductory programming CS1 course. None of the students are CS majors. The course is taken by about two-thirds of all CMU undergraduates. Nearly all are there because the course is required by their department. On the plus side, this means that students have low expectations, and there's a real opportunity to get them excited about programming. The vast majority of the students have never seen even the simplest program before (although, sadly, many think they have programming experience because they've used HTML).

I lost all my fall CAs (course assistants), so I hired 7 students from my fall course to help me teach in the spring. I wanted to be actively involved in the classroom all 4 days of the week, instead of leaving recitations to my CAs. And with a full teaching load this term, after teaching 9 classes a week in the fall, I was now teaching 16 in the spring, which cut into my preparation time. (I also sat in on a colleague's CS0 course 4 days a week.) On a typical week, I introduced new material on a Monday and had students work on the week's programming assignment during class on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, interrupting them only to give a 20-minute quiz each Wednesday. Assignments were due Monday nights, so I spent Monday evenings helping students in the lab.

I created most of my materials from scratch, so this was an exhausting but more rewarding semester. And with so much class time, and creating a new assignment, quiz, and lecture every week, it was almost as intense as teaching high school.

The Plan

In shaping the course, I set out to teach as little Java as possible, covering only the essentials and postponing any syntactic shortcuts. This way, students could master the fundamental concepts and focus on how to use them effectively, instead of getting lost in punctuation. I also tried to plan each week around some compelling programming project. There's no point in introducing a new construct unless it lets students build something new and meaningful. Plus, if students are going to have to program for several hours a week, they ought to have something cool to show for their efforts.

One of the great debates in CS education is when to teach object-oriented programming. I wasn't exposed to the object paradigm until my sophomore year of college, when I had already been programming for a long time. The order that I learned makes a lot of sense to me--starting with functions and data, and then learning how an object-oriented language lets you bundle functions and data together. But, since Java is, unfortunately, the language du jour for intro programming courses, and Java is deeply object-oriented, most Java teachers have their students using objects early in the course.

The U. Washington lecturers took a different approach. They wanted to use Java in their first few CS courses, but to keep objects out of CS1. So, they have their students declare everything as "static," essentially bypassing Java's object-oriented mechanism. This is what I decided to do in my course, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I'll definitely teach Java this way again, and I'm increasingly finding myself opposed to object-oriented programming in an introductory course.

In the past, I've begun my introductory Java courses using a rich object-oriented problem-solving framework called Karel J. Robot, in which students program a virtual robot to solve simple tasks. This means that students are writing interesting graphical programs on day 1, instead of writing boring programs to print "Hello World!", calculate sales tax, etc. Karel comes with a beautiful mini curriculum, that's designed so that, after each topic, students are almost begging to learn the next topic. For example, the robot can initially only move forward one step, or turn 90 degrees to the left. Students quickly discover they can make the robot turn right by turning left 3 times. But after a day of doing this, students can't wait to learn how to define the word "right" to mean "turn left 3 times." Unfortunately, Karel J. Robot is object-oriented, but luckily it was easy to build my own non-object-oriented framework based on it.

A screenshot of my robot framework. Yes, I spent hours trying to draw a robot before settling on this simple but endearing design, which I think is part Wall-E and part Fluffy.

Another beautiful thing about the Karel curriculum, is that it presents the language just a little at a time. Each time a new construct is introduced, the grammar is explicitly presented to students (much like MIT's extinct 6.001 SICP course). I did my best to stick with this plan, even testing students on both grammar and evaluation rules. Next semester I plan to do even more of this.

Finally, on the recommendation of one of my course assistants, I had my students use a development environment called DrJava. I like it because (a) you don't need to deal with all the nonsense of making projects/workspaces/etc., and (b) you can execute instructions, one at a time, in the interactions pane at the bottom of the screen.

Weeks 1 - 3: Traditional Robots

From the beginning of my course, students could immediately open my framework in DrJava, and start typing instructions like:

Robot.load("maze.txt");
Robot.move();
Robot.turnLeft();
Robot.makeDark();
Robot.makeLight();

After another day, they were defining their own instructions, like:

public static void turnRight()
{
Robot.turnLeft();
Robot.turnLeft();
Robot.turnLeft();
}

Students used my robot framework to write methods in week 1, use ifs in week 2, and implement loops in week 3.

Week 4: Towers of Hanoi

Transitioning from the Karel curriculum to the rest of Java, especially variables, is always pretty rocky. So, this time I developed some problems where we could use variables and integers in my robot framework, culminating in one of the most original assignments in the course. Without recursion, data structures, or even parameters, we implemented the classic "Towers of Hanoi."

The 3 pedestals on the right are the "Towers of Hanoi." The first pedestal is used for scratch work, and the second stores the list of work left to do, which in this case is to "move 7 girders from tower 1 to tower 2."

Unfortunately, only those students who made it through the extra credit got to see their robot solve the "Towers of Hanoi." The final program took about 5 minutes to run, but was absolutely mesmerizing to watch.

Week 5: Bait and Switch

The next week I used the robot to introduce parameters, and I think the assignment was very clever. First, students created a library called RoboPlot, with functions instructing the robot to set the color (light/dark) at a particular row and column, etc. Next, the students implemented 1-dimensional cellular automata, using only the functions from RoboPlot (and no references to the robot). This ran excruciatingly slow. Then, students downloaded a file I created called FastPlot, which had all the same function names as RoboPlot, but ran much faster. Slowly, it began to dawn on students that there wasn't a robot inside FastPlot, and by the time they realized, they'd already been programming without the robot for several exercises.

a cellular automata rule, which generates a seemingly random pattern

Week 6: Classes Are Hard. OOPs.

And that was the end of the robot and procedural programming. At this point, I introduced object-oriented programming, having the students create their own objects. This was not a good idea. There's so much syntax involved in creating and using objects, that it would definitely have been better if we spent a week or two using objects before we tried creating our own. Next time.

Week 7: Media Computation

When we did start using objects, I revealed that my framework could do a lot more than control a robot. I had the students use my framework objects to manipulate images, inspired by the media computation curriculum created at Georgia Tech. The students really came alive when we started manipulating photos, and they were full of ideas. Here are some examples of the effects we implemented in the assignment:

Week 8: Bejeweled

Halfway into the course, I flew down to the SIGCSE conference in Chattanooga, where I had a good time catching up with old friends and getting to know some of my CMU colleagues better. I spent the rest of my spring break putting together a programming assignment based on the classic (but copyrighted) game of Bejeweled.

Not only does my framework let you set the color of a cell, but you can also place little images in it. And you can call a method to determine if a cell has been clicked, or a key has been pressed (without having to implement a listener). It was a big win to use the same graphical user interface framework for many assignments, so that I didn't have to introduce a new set of objects each time.

I introduced this material in my favorite lecture of the semester. I started by placing a picture of a duck in an empty cell. In one section, a girl in the back row said, "Oh, I just love ducks!" to which I responded wryly, "Then you're going to love this lesson..." I showed students how to make the program print "Quack" when you click on the duck. Then I asked innocently, what else could the program do when you click on a duck? "Kill it!" students answered with enthusiasm, and we went on to program a simplified version of the classic Nintendo Duck Hunt game. We called ours "Ducky Slayer."

Week 9: Spelling Out Everything

Next we learned about strings, and implemented the same word games I used in my AP class. The experience really drove home the difference between teaching groups of 15 high school kids, where all coding is done in the classroom with me, vs. teaching 95 college kids who didn't want to take a programming course and who do most of their work at night, when I can't help them. As a high school teacher, I could cut up an assignment into fewer, larger parts, and if someone was stuck, I was there to give a hint. With 95 students working in their dorms, you can't be there to give a hint, or clarify a vague instruction. So, rather than leave lots of beginning programming students stuck and frustrated, I erred on the side of giving away too much in my assignments, and with this particular one, I probably didn't give away enough. With all the explanations and examples, the assignment was still many times longer than the one I had used with my AP students.

Week 10: Tetris

For the next week, I substantially modified my classic Tetris assignment. It was a big hit with the students, but I'm not sure how effective it was in teaching arrays.

Week 11: Golf Solitaire

Next I had to teach collections of objects, so I wanted to make a card game with lots of collections of cards. I like implementing solitaire games, since you can play them without a friend and without writing an AI player. I've used the classic Klondike solitaire game in my AP class before, and it's a pretty big assignment, because there are so many rules. I read through the rules of a bunch of other solitaire games, before settling on one called Golf Solitaire, which I later found to be quite addictive.

We used my framework again for this assignment, this time with pictures of cards.

CMU's CS1 is probably the only Java course in the world that insists on having students use fixed-size arrays to implement resizable lists of objects. (The rest of the world uses Java's built-in ArrayList object, which does everything you'd ever want to do with arrays, and with more consistent syntax.)

Our Pile object represented a collection of cards.

Week 12: Chars

The AP course brilliantly omitted Java's char data type, since anything you would ever want to do with characters can be done using strings. But our CS1 course insists on teaching students to use chars. Furthermore, since characters are stored internally as integers (e.g. 'A' is 65), Java lets directly perform integer arithmetic on characters. And unfortunately, our final exam tests this.

So, I had students write code to encrypt messages using a Vigenère cipher. At the end of the assignment, I told them I had used the word "char" itself to encrypt a message, and I showed them the encrypted message. Many of my students successfully decrypted it, to find it asked them to use another word to decrypt another message. When that message was decrypted, it told students they could win a prize if they were the first in their section to send me an email with a word meaning "to burn or scorch by incomplete combustion." So my inbox was full of emails with subject line "char," and a couple with subject line "singe," etc. And the prize? Magnetic chars for your fridge. Students got a real kick out of my clever ending to an otherwise dumb assignment.

Week 13: The Kevin Bacon Game

For the final assignment, I wanted to do something that involved searching through large amounts of data. I downloaded movie data from IMDB, and spent countless hours paring down hundreds of megs to the the 100 or 1000 most popular actors and movies. In the end, the assignment provided tons of practice with collections, but was a bit too long, and even with my step-by-step instructions for implementing a breadth-first search at the end of the assignment, it proved to be too abstract for most students.

one of many diagrams and examples I added to the assignment, as it became increasingly clear that students didn't understand the algorithm

Reflections

The common final exam given to students of all 7 instructors, reflects the bias of a more traditional curriculum, in which program execution begins from a "main" method (not from DrJava's interaction pane), and output is printed text (not graphics). So, in my last lesson of the term, I amused myself by teaching students to write the "Hello World!" program that would traditionally be introduced on day 1.

I gave surveys at the end of the class. Here's what I learned:

82% thought the class was well paced (although I felt it moved too fast).
87% liked having so much time to work in class.
Lectures sometimes went too quickly (a consequence of giving students time to work).
Weekly quizzes were a necessary evil, and preferable to occasional exams.
Favorite assignments were Tetris (89%), Media Computation (81%), Bejeweled (74%), and the first 3 weeks of robot tasks (63%).
Homework took about 4.5 hours per week (outside of class).
Help was very available, and my course assistants were great!
34% plan to take a follow-on CS course.

That still left the question of whether I had adequately prepared my students for the final. Thankfully, my final exam average of 80.1% was quite respectable (especially with my low drop rate). Incidentally, there was a large range of final exam averages across instructors--a recurring phenomenon that isn't well understood.

Before I taught the course, a few instructors claimed that the entire course content could be taught with weeks to spare, and several instructors found at least some time to teach more advanced programming concepts, like inheritance, sorting, etc. I decided I would spend my extra time teaching big CS ideas, like: How do computers work? How does the Internet work? How is data represented by ones and zeroes?

Wisely, though, I decided to front-load my course with programming skills, and ultimately found there was no time leftover for the big ideas. Although the content can be "taught" in just 20 lectures, with 35 class days to spare, students can only learn the material so fast. And even with my pared down curriculum, I still felt I was pushing them to learn faster than they were comfortable.

What could we cut from the course to make room for big ideas? The language-specific stuff: characters, arrays (instead of ArrayLists), object-oriented programming, and declared types. Without all that, we might find a month to explore the big ideas. I'm pushing to make the course objectives flexible enough to let us move in this direction.

I'm teaching the course again next semester, but in the new Gates building (where my new office will be). We'll only have computers in the classroom 1 day a week instead of 4, so I need to change my course substantially. Also, we're now limited to half as much help from course assistants. All this means that students will have much less time to work in class, and much less help outside. It also means programming assignments will need to be a little shorter, giving students less practice. And with less support and greater anonymity, students are bound to cheat more. In the end, there's no question that students will be less prepared for the final.

CMU: Semester 1

2009-05-17T08:37:00.020-04:00

Somehow, I got buried by the second semester before I had a chance to blog about the first. So, we'll start with the fall...

In the fall, I was 1 of 4 instructors teaching CMU's CS2 course: an introduction to data structures. Compared to my experiences teaching high school, I found this to be less work, but less rewarding. Mostly, this is because I taught from another instructor's materials, to help me adjust to CMU culture. That means, I didn't need to write my own assignments or exams, and I had undergraduate CAs (course assistants) grading for me. I also followed my colleagues' lead, by having each week consist of 3 lectures, and 1 recitation (run by my CAs). Lecturing 3 days a week, I found I had plenty of time to cover the material at a comfortable pace. (However, I often felt I was babbling about data structures to myself, while my students sat silent, tired, and bored.)

Lectures were the one area of the course that I made my own. I left them somewhat open-ended, attempting to draw in the students to influence the direction of the lecture, while I tried to lead them to discover the day's topic. That meant using the whiteboard, instead of relying on canned PowerPoint slides. Unfortunately, the classrooms we use don't have whiteboards...

In my abundant free time, I found I could actually focus my efforts on projects of my own. That meant continued musings about physics. It also included implementing my own virtual whiteboard, which I've used for my lectures both semesters.

Don't tell the CS3 instructors I introduced graphs!

Another project I started work on concerns programming environments for beginners. CS educators are really excited about Alice and Scratch--programming languages that let you drag-and-drop instructions to form programs, thus removing the hurdles associated with typing and syntax errors. My theory is that teachers choose these languages solely for their easy user interfaces, and not based on the merits or drawbacks of the programming languages themselves.

When you want to create a new programming language, you feed its grammar into a tool called a parser generator, and out pops a parser for reading the syntax of your language. What I set out to create is the equivalent tool for drag-and-drop programming, where you feed a grammar into the tool, and out pops a user interface for drag-and-drop programming. My hope is that, if it's easy to make drag-and-drop Python, etc., then maybe teachers won't be locked into using Alice/Scratch for beginners. Anyway, I put together a first draft at such a tool. Hopefully, I'll have the time and motivation to build it in full some day.

Near the end of the semester, I found myself increasingly busy working on our common final exam. I was relieved when, on average, my students scored slightly better on the final exam than students in the other instructors' sections. The common final is one of two means for measuring our teaching success. The other is course evaluations. Although I never directly asked my high school students to rate me, I always had the sense that they really liked my teaching. However, my first batch of college students were much less enthusiastic about me, rating me somewhere between mediocre and good, and were fairly divided. It's not clear how much they were rating my small contributions to the course, or rating the other instructor's assignments and exams, or rating the awkward union of the two, or rating my obvious lack of involvement with the course. Depressingly, some students said that they relied on the other instructors' PowerPoint slides to get them through the course.

During my winter break, I created a couple stereograms, thinking this would be a simple project for students to implement in my spring course. But I scrapped the idea when everyone I know claimed not to be able to see them. :(

Click on the picture for the full size stereogram.

Guess what I watched over winter break.

Signs of Life

2009-05-11T16:48:00.003-04:00

Lettuces are coming up beside the garage.

Tourists

2009-05-09T16:32:00.003-04:00

Little Meats

2009-04-10T14:29:00.006-04:00

So I found myself with 4 lbs of pork shoulder butt in the freezer, left over from a Penn's Corner Farm Alliance "Yard Sale" this winter, and I knew it had to be enjoyed before it got freezer burn and too warm to use heat indoors.....Carnitas!!

3-4 lbs pork shoulder, de-boned, all fat left ON, cut into 4" chunks
1 pint bottle of Coke
1 pint bottle of orange juice
1 cup salsa verde
1 cup tomato salsa
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 cup or more rendered bacon fat (or lard) (basically just grab as much pork fat as you can for this dish)

1. Put everything (except the bacon fat) in the slow cooker and cook on low for about 8 hours (until the meat is just completely falling apart).

2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Remove the meat from the liquids, spread it all out on a large baking dish, and pull it apart to desired bite size chunks.

3. Dollop bacon fat all over the meat. Also you can separate the fat from the cooking liquid and pour that fat on too. (I also reduced the strained, non-fat liquid in a separate pan for gravy).

4. When the oven is hot, put the uncovered dish of meat in for 10-15 minutes, or until browned to the desired level of crispiness. Turn meat over and brown the other side.

5. Serve with warm tortillas and other south-of-the-border accoutrements.

6. Stuff yer face!

Snow Day

2009-04-07T09:49:00.007-04:00

It's been snowing since last night and we accumulated a surprising amount. I really hope the flowers that just bloomed in our yard won't be damaged.

Note in the first picture above that the tangle of raspberry bramble that used to grow behind the garage is gone now. I hacked it all down before leaving on my weekend trip.

It may grow back a little this season, but I'm not especially keen because there's a lot of morning glory roots under all that, and I'd like to work it out before anything more goes in. I doubt I'll have the energy for more of that this season.

Before:

You might also notice in that first photo that there are 3 scraggly bushes on the right side. The landlord tells me those are currants. That composting bin on the left has to go.

(bitter) sweet

2009-04-07T05:12:00.009-04:00

This morning I woke up and saw a dusting of snow had accumulated on the roof. :( It made me long for the beautiful weekend I had in Columbus, OH reminiscing with my Phi Mu sisters almost 20 years after I pledged.

I stayed in a lovely B&B, the Short North Bed and Breakfast, about 1.5 blocks off High Street right in the heart of the neighborhood shopping district. It's a nicely maintained inn, although it's not a historic home, just a standard 1930s red brick duplex converted into a 7-room inn. Even though the walls are a bit thin and it is family friendly, I had a nice stay in the spacious extra-large room (with queen+twin beds and large full bath), and the breakfast was very good. It was also quite convenient to have free on-site parking during a gallery hop weekend.

Friday night, Jen took me to Nida's Thai on High, just a few blocks from the inn. It's a small place, but it didn't feel crowded because the atmosphere is clean and bright. We had friendly service, superb cocktails, a spicy Tom Kha soup, and plenty of small plates. The peanut sauce was dynamite. They even have sushi!

Saturday morning I had some time to wander around the neighborhood to see what was still there and what was new. I was very pleased to see Jeni's Ice Cream was just a block from the inn. That came in handy later when the weather warmed considerably during a lengthy walking tour of the OSU campus.

At lunch I got together with some of my best buddies from back in the old college days for lunch at Eddie George's Grille 27. We talked for hours while the server desperately tried to get us to order drinks and food. Afterward we walked around campus reliving the glory days.

The reunion "dinner" was served at Due Amici. I got to see a lot of old friends and look at photo albums.

I anticipated a sit-down dinner, but was instead treated to a cocktail party so we ordered a pizza post-party.

The following morning we gathered again at La Chatelaine, and enjoyed a sunny brunch on the patio. I amused myself with a fruit tart and good coffee while browsing more photo albums.

I was sad to leave, but there were promises of a gathering next year, and some subset of my sisters may appear on my doorstep much sooner, I hope!

A Profusion Of Color

2009-04-01T09:48:00.018-04:00

When the Feinbergs were here last weekend we took them to Phipps Conservatory for lunch and a tour. The conservatory had just opened a stunning spring show:

Apparently, the orchid room was recently redone:

I was enchanted with the succulents and cacti:

Even the non-flowering plants were gorgeous:

If you want more, see my Flora album at Flickr.

For The Birds

2009-03-31T12:52:00.007-04:00

My inlaws, Paul and Hilary, came to visit last weekend. Paul loves birds so we thought the National Aviary on the North Side of Pittsburgh would be the ideal entertainment for him.

On the way in we saw this guy:

I wouldn't have thought that a two-toed sloth could be considered cute (or an ideal resident for an aviary).

Then we were treated to these majestic creatures:

Some of the birds were clearly not interested in being on display:

Let us out!

In the big main room there were a lot of bird calls, but they were hard to see with all the vegetation. Fortunately this one wanted to be the center of attention:

We were about to head out to the car when Dave noticed a sign leading to another area. That was where we found the flamingos and other tropical birds, which ended up being the best part of the aviary. There we witnessed an argument between two pelicans and a couple of very screechy yellow birds (I think they were conures).

Tea For One

2009-03-26T10:17:00.009-04:00

Since I inherited a few proper tea things from Grannie's estate, I've been enjoying a little fancy tea party in the afternoons. Give me a break, it's not like I have a buddy to go on coffee runs with, so I have to entertain myself. :)

Last Saturday, I bullied Dave into driving across town with me to a community outreach center in a sketchy neighborhood to pick up some locally produced meat and eggs I ordered through Laptop Butcher Shop, a conduit through which city folk like us can buy the freshest, cleanest, meat, dairy, and produce Western PA has to offer.

I made him some kabab last night from Rose Ridge Farm grass-fed beef, which made it a bit easier to swallow.

Lately I've been obsessed with eggs from pasture-raised organic chickens (see Breakfast of Champions), so I jumped at the chance to grab a couple dozen from Wolf Lake Farm for only $4/dozen!

On a completely unrelated topic, we finally captured an invader on camera. This cat stalks through our backyard nearly every afternoon to sneak up on the massive bird feeder our neighbors set up last fall.

Aha!

Breakfast of Champions

2009-03-26T10:09:00.005-04:00

Joey, this one's for you!

Yin and Yawn

2009-03-23T08:40:00.025-04:00

Jackie and Mr. M are curled up on the futon behind me while I work this morning. The mornings are still pretty cold so this may last a few more weeks.

Dave and I had a pretty standard weekend. We went to check out JoJo's in the Strip for breakfast Saturday. The prices were dirt cheap, but the food was not very exciting, and they don't heat the place. It was freezing! People rave about this place, maybe they were drunk?

Later in the day we stopped in at Games Unlimited on Murry Ave, and picked up a jigsaw puzzle of San Francisco.

Dave is so proud!

I started clearing the garden bed on the south side of the garage yesterday. This was a bed I let run wild last summer because I just didn't have the energy to tackle a jungle of morning glory.

Before (last summer):

Watch it bring you to your
shun n,n,n,n,n,n,n knees, knees!

I didn't even get very far because there are so many weeds to root out, but it's a start.

After-ish:

I'm digging in the dirt
Stay with me I need support

The weather got fair again over the weekend, and another crocus came up.

I love purple!

The neighbor's cats are back outside on their tethers on a daily basis. They're much friendlier now that they know I have the power to give them treats.

Oden begs for a tummy rub

Cats!

2009-03-19T17:05:00.009-04:00

It's been awhile since I posted pictures of our cats, so for those of you who want to know what's happening with them, here is your fix.

I have been working too hard lately, and my back is killing me. Fortunately I have furry friends (and hot chocolate) to distract me from the pain.

Jackie's favorite spot to sleep over the winter is between the couch and the heater in the living room.

This is what happens when Mr. Moustache gets too annoying.

Spring is Springing

2009-03-16T14:36:00.013-04:00

The bulbs are pushing out leaves in the front yard, and we have our first blooming flower. It's so refreshing to finally see color in our otherwise gray and brown landscape.

Can anyone identify these? I'm hoping for tulips and daffodils!

This last week has been a good one. We spent Thursday-Saturday at the Inn at Walnut Acres in beautiful Bellefonte (pronounced bell-font), PA. This is a tiny historic town near State College, and it is full of beautifully preserved Victorian houses and antique/country clutter shops.

Obligatory toy store hilarity

The inn is a bit odd because it is actually a modern large house in the country outside of town, rather than the usual drafty creaky-floored Victorian manse. The house is also home to a large family including younger adults/teenagers, so the fantasy of a world populated only by adults was somewhat compromised.

On the bright side, the rooms were large and comfortable and we had a steam shower! The grounds were extensive and included interesting animals.

Exhibit A: Misty the friendly guard dog

Exhibit B: Cowgoat

The restaurants we dined at were also very good. Dinner on Thursday at the High Street Pub where we encountered an art opening also presented a clean, modern pub dining experience, however, the Guinness was served in a bottle. Waffle lunch at the Waffle Shop was as advertised, but Dave didn't get enough chocolate chips on his waffle. Cool Beans coffee shop was a surprisingly cozy hangout, which we did while sipping lattes and playing cards. Dinner at the Gamble Mill was not all it was hyped up to be, but the restaurant is very nicely decorated and the food wasn't bad.

The week ended with me doing laundry and cleaning out the guest room (getting it ready for whoever might drop by--HINT HINT), and both of us got some crappy mild upper-respiratory illness.

This week I'm back in my office after finally finishing the cleanup after the floor debacle. Now I'm thinking about gardening and trying to figure out what to plant after I clear up all the old dead weeds from the beds. Any ideas?

The Winter Months

2009-03-08T10:21:00.025-04:00

Whenever I stop a regular activity for awhile, such as an exercise program, it's so hard to get started again. First there's the feeling of guilt that I'm letting myself down by not doing this thing that is good for me, but feeling too tired to really get started again esp having reclaimed that time to watch more HGTV, and knowing that I'm going to be so sore and exhausted for awhile until I get stronger. Well, I guess blogging is kinda like that too, so this is going to be a quick catchup since I don't want to be too sore tomorrow. :)

Back in December my Grannie died about a week before Christmas, so I rushed down to help sort her things out and be there for the memorial service. It was a huge turnout of her friends and neighbors. I returned with a carload of Christmas decorations, silver, and china. It was sad at first seeing Grannie's things in my house, but I am really enjoying having them now.

At Christmas we went to NJ to visit Dave's family where wee had a traditional Italian dinner at Aunt Jeanie's, then we spent a couple of days in Cape May in a sort of timeout, then on to DC for New Year's Eve with my family where we went ahead with the dinner party Grannie had planned. It was really good seeing everyone and feeling connected with so many people during a sad time for me.

Enjoying a Cape May day

When we got home from our Christmas/NYE trip Dave found that one caster on the guest bed had gone through the creaky old floor boards, so we had the fun of communicating this to our Chicago landlord, and hiring a contractor to repair that and some other weak areas in the floors. I was so glad when the work was done and the workmen were out of the house, but they left me with a huge amount of cleanup and not a little bit of aesthetic detail to repair as well. I now know much more about house construction and floor refinishing that I ever wanted to know.

January and February were a blur of getting cable TV (so we could watch Awards shows and the inauguration), and getting a Wii (so we would have something to keep us active during the dark snowy days). Since we got cable I've become addicted to HGTV and keep it on all day while I'm working. Dave very quickly went pro on Wii Tennis and now is over 2000 points. I recently got to pro, but I don't play as much.

Dave goes pro

We saw as many Academy-nominated films as possible leading up to the Oscar show (which I could barely stay awake for). There were a lot of good films this year, but we were disappointed that Dark Knight didn't get more attention.

I've recently taken up baking using recipes from a wonderful Amazon find: Small-Batch Baking. The recipes work very well, and I'm really enjoying what I used to do a lot of as a kid, but dropped when my bird-like metabolism slowed down. It's great to enjoy a batch of only 6 cookies rather than face dozens.

Chocolate-dipped chocolate-almond biscotti on Grannie's china
(and on Grannie's coffee table)

We've gone to a few new restaurants over the winter. Not too many notable ones, but a few of the highlights were:

Max and Erma's--this was a family favorite when I was a kid and Dave had never been to one, so we tried the Shadyside location and it was everything I remembered, even the sundae bar is still part of the experience. We found the food to be of good quality, and the fresh baked chocolate cookies were awesome.

Kaya--this is one of the Big Burrito Group restaurants that serves a Caribbean fusion sort of fare. The menu changes a lot so we were unfortunate to get there on a heavy seafood day, and everything was very spicy. I don't think Dave will be back but I'd like to go with anyone who likes spicy seafood and try some more adventurous dishes.

DeLuca's--this is one of those truckstop diner type places where you can get a big pile of pancakes and bacon while sitting at the counter watching the hustle and bustle as the staff and the tiny kitchen try to keep up with the massive line forming at the door. The food was everything you'd expect and more, but the service was spotty because the crowds they get are much to big.

Whew, well that was quite a workout. Hopefully it gets easier from here. I'll be back! Promise!

The Omega Fontega

2008-12-23T15:23:00.004-05:00

Virg insisted I blog about this. Our favorite sandwich place is Panera, where they consistently put together sandwiches with great combinations of ingredients. And whatever you order, they seem to be done making it before you can find a table.

Last week I stopped at our local Panera and ordered a Fontega Chicken Hot Panini sandwich. Ten minutes later, one of the people making sandwiches called out my name, and told me they were out of that sandwich. This confused me. I can understand being out of a particular ingredient, but how can you be out of an entire sandwich? So I asked, "Did you just say you were out of Fontega Chicken?" The woman replied, "Well, we only have half a sandwich left. But we can give you half of any other hot panini sandwich." From this, I learned two important facts about Panera:

1. The hot panini sandwiches aren't made fresh. They're pre-made.
2. The people at Panera are unable to assemble new hot panini sandwiches. (This is mysterious, because they clearly possess chicken, mozzarella, tomato, and focaccia.)

The implication is clear. Panera does not make hot panini sandwiches. A long time ago, Panera explorers came upon the remnants of an ancient society of super-intelligent aliens, who, deep within an intricate network of underground crystal caves, hid a stash of hot panini sandwiches. And since 1981, Panera has been mining those sandwiches and selling them to customers for $6.79. Except that now, I have eaten the last of the Fontega Chicken sandwiches, and it's only a matter of time before the world's supply of Smokehouse Turkey dries up, too!