Gremlins live in my computer

Sad news day for the Boston art world

2009-01-27T18:54:29Z

Brandeis is closing the Rose Art Museum and *selling* thier extensive, amazing collection. Might I add they built a brand new addition only 7-8 years ago. This is awful for a variety of reasons, but just think if you were one of the generous people who donated one of your personal collection pieces to this museum; and now the school is turning around and selling it off with zero regard for the museum itself or its supporters. I really feel like, at the very least, pieces donated within the past few years should return to the collectors who donated them.

The director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum wants to add a hiddeous new addition, does not want to talk about what it might cost or if they have the money for it, and wants a lawyer to say that she can despite the written will of Isabella Stewart Gardner herself.

Curator Bill Arning of the MIT List Visual Arts Center is leaving Cambridge to be director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, TX.

Pleo!

2008-12-18T03:49:34Z

Oh my god I want one! Cutest. Thing. EVAR.
www.youtube.com/watch

meme, while taking a break between bouts of awesome

2008-12-01T00:36:59Z

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland (nope, just disneyworld)
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sung a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty (at least, I think we did, I was young. I know we went there.)
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you're not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise (little ones, not overnight)
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo's David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted (by me...)
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris (afraid of heights, couldn't bring myself to go up)
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling (swam with a sea turtle!)
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater (my lack of drive-in experience is lame, because I grew up less than a mile from one, and vacationing near one)
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy (I still sleep with Penelope the Panda...)
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book (well, my art in an indy book. And, eBooks, at work...)
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car (I think I've finally named her the Ninja)
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone's life (not that I know of...)
90. Sat on a jury (almost, but they decided I was too opinionated)
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club (co-workers and I are re-reading Sweet Valley High and Babysitters Club books!)
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swum in the Great Salt Lake (no, but I've swum in the Mediterranean...)
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Read an entire book in one day

more cullinary adventures

2008-11-08T04:33:33Z

Last Sunday, Jake, Andrea and I made awesome pizza. Home-made ingredients: Me - crust from my mom's recipe; tomato sauce (from scratch, but boring - canned plain sauce, garlic powder, salt, fresh ground pepper, dried oregano, dried basil). Jake - home-made pesto from his basil plant, sautéed chicken breast. Other toppings: pancetta, kalamata olives, marinated artichoke hearts, sliced red onion, fresh garlic, parmesan, fresh mozzarella. It came out really well.

Last night's dinner: chicken prosciutto tortellini (store-bought, but fresh) with sauce of: caramelized red onion, butter, olive oil, riesling, lemon juice, touch of salt and fresh ground pepper, tablespoon or so of flour to thicken. Taaaaaaasty.

Last night's dessert: an adventure for tashari and I that we'd been planning for awhile - crème brûlée! Neither of us had ever made it before and it came out quite well. Pretty basic recipe (8 egg yolks, 1/2 c. sugar, combine; gradually stir in 2 c. almost-simmering heavy cream & 1t. vanilla; strain w/ fine mesh sieve, pour into 6 ramekins), but we put about 4 slices of banana in each ramekin as well. Cook in water bath at 250 for an hour-ish, chill, top with sugar, and torch it. That was of course the fun part - that, and breaking the caramel with a spoon. Now that I know it's easy, I'll probably be making it more (just like ganache tarts...).

Saved and refrigerated the egg whites from the crème brûlée - I'll be making meringues with those tomorrow.

Tonight I had a craving for French onion soup, so I whipped some up (only takes like 30 min. to make a single serving, especially with a toaster oven to broil it). However, the onions would be tastier caramelized slower; burgundy would work better in it than riesling (which was just what I had on-hand that was already open); and it would be better with Gruyère rather than the cheddar that I had on-hand. So I think I might make it for real this weekend.

Also, I've been wanting to make bread, and craving cinnamon raisin bread, so I think that's going to happen this weekend. And, I have a bunch of apples that I need to do something with; I'm thinking turnovers, so I can freeze them and pop them in the toaster over for tasty breakfasts for awhile. I've also got a butternut squash and an acorn squash. I'm trying to decide what to do with them. Roasting, soup, and croquettes are top of the list of choices.

Oh, also, a few weekends ago, I made an awesome dinner for the roommies and me. Mustard-crusted roasted potatoes; baked chicken breast topped with pancetta, fresh garlic, rosemary, balsamic, olive oil, and white wine; dessert of cranberry coffee cake (altered recipe from epicurious.com - theirs didn't have any spices, or a crumb topping, which is just heresy).

HISTORIC!

2008-11-05T04:44:30Z

I am still cynical. There is a lot of clean-up to do to make me proud of this country again. We need to fix Iraq, Afghanistan, oil, Wall Street, economy, energy, industry, global warming, education, housing crisis, national debt, health care, etc., etc., etc.... but, see above. Hope. That is what I finally have now. Not faith that Barack Obama is the magic answer. Not an assurance that we're on the path to improvement. But hope that perhaps, perhaps these all of these problems are not so insurmountable.

Have you seen the Adventuring PArty Politics post yet?

2008-10-23T02:08:15Z

It's f'ing brilliant

culinary adventures

2008-10-14T01:53:10Z

Sunday's breakfast was inspired by a meal I had at the El Tovar Hotel on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. I modified a King Arthur Flour pancake recipe to use half regular flour, half a mix of whole wheat and ground oatmeal. Kept the 3 egg yolks, 1.25c buttermilk, 1.25c heavy cream, and 2T melted butter. Added about 0.5c ground pecans. Sauce: 3 pureed prickly pears and probably 0.25c agave nectar, plus a pinch of salt, warmed and strained. Amazing. Next time I'd add a touch more buttermilk to the pancakes, and a bit of lime juice to the sauce.

Tonight, I tried venison for the first time. A.V. made it, marinated in balsamic, soy sauce, garlic oil, salt, and pepper. It was wicked good. One more New England thing checked off the list.

In a few minutes, I'll be attempting a vegan apple tart, with brandy-soaked organic local apples.

This weekend, I'm going to attempt to find buffalo milk. Next week, I'll be making mozzarella with it (or with cow's milk if I fail at finding it).

Yard Sale!

2008-09-19T22:10:49Z

150 Powder House Blvd.
This Sunday, 9/21
9am-3pm

Video games, role-playing books, law books, random books, anime, random VHSs, kitchen stuff, throw pillows, Christmas decorations, candles... a whole gamut of ~~junk~~ lovely items for your home! A few big-ticket items include Thule roof racks and a Dyson vacuum cleaner. Come buy our stuff!

Free tours of my new place included for those of you I know and like

Great Big Sea Oct. 24?

2008-09-18T00:52:46Z

Anyone wanna join me and Jake for Great Big Sea at the Orpheum at 8pm on Oct. 24? Tickets are I think $30. I'll probably be buying tix at the box office this week, so if you want to avoid Ticket~~Whore~~Master fees, let me know by Friday.

Random!

2008-09-18T00:41:07Z

Great Big Sea, Live In Concert is on NH public television. Squee!

work-related rant

2008-09-17T03:06:57Z

Why is every Angel server I've ever accessed SO SLOW??? Gah!

Also, the fact that in 7.2, all assessments go both into the Lessons/Content area as Quizzes, AND have a separate copy made in the question pool? LAME! Twice as much file space for no extra functionality. Idea: Deploy them as course links in the Lessons/Content area, linking to the question pool instance by ID, give them static IDs so they don't change and break when imported/exported, come up with some standard scheme for appending the IDs (in both the pool and the course links) in the instance that two content packages with the same IDs are uploaded into the same course. Problem solved!

Really, it is still my favorite course management system, I swear... it just still needs work...

Cirque Du Soleil?

2008-09-09T19:42:15Z

I might be able to get 2-4 3rd-row tickets to Cirque Du Soleil's Kooza this Saturday at 8pm for $75 each. If I can get them, would anyone be interested in going?

MAUI!!!!

2008-09-04T14:10:58Z

I'm going to Maui!!! Tickets are purchased! Sept. 24 - the wee hours of the morn of 10/1. Whee!!!!

I wanna see sea tutles, and dolphins, and brightly colored weird fish, and turquoise water, and white sand, and gorgeous sunsets, and a volcano, and amazing waterfalls, and palm trees, and hula dancers, and fire spinners, and a pig cooked in a pit, and leis, and tropical drinks with umbrellas, and geckos, and surfers, and, and and...

awesome wording from the U-Haul site

2008-08-08T02:52:56Z

"In the event of war, riot, civil unrest, insurrection, Act of God or other force majeure that significantly disrupts the operations of U-Haul, it shall not be obligated to pay customers the $50 payment even if the reservation had been guaranteed."

amethystmoon @ 2008-07-20T20:26:00

2008-07-21T00:27:29Z

I am home safe and sound from Mississippi. I had an amazing week. The teens in my group are all awesome, mazing, impressive people. The family that we helped out were soooo appreciative, and so nice, and just awesome. More details later.

amethystmoon @ 2008-07-06T18:47:00

2008-07-06T22:48:30Z

I spent the 4th with friends, and the weekend on a mountain. Cheers to rebels and revolutions.

I hate these parades

2008-06-19T16:53:10Z

Am I the only one who doesn't think the Celtics "rolling rally" is a good excuse to scream and chant and jostle people on a crowded train? Didn't your parents teach you about "indoor voices"? Can't you recognize that the train is still an "indoor" space, and some of us just wanted to get to work?

Crap!

2008-06-18T04:29:12Z

I stayed late at work.. and now there's Celtics rioting on Boylston. I think it's probably best at this point if I don't leave until it's over. Also, I really hope my car is ok on Newbury St. Crap crap crap!

Silent Spring

2008-06-07T17:29:01Z

So I finally started reading Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, last weekend. It's basically the original environmentalist book. It was written in 1962, and it's all about the government pesticide spraying programs, and the rise in pesticide use, radiation, and the creation of non-natural chemicals. It may touch on other things later, I'm only halfway through, but I think the focus remains mostly on pesticides, just examining them from different perspectives in each chapter (affect on birds, affect on the soil, affect on groundwater, etc.).

I consider myself pretty well-educated as laymen environmentalists go, and certainly this data is now out-dated, but it's really eye-opening to have some of this info laid out in front of me with dates and stats and such, and to realize that, basically, we were pretty ok until the 20th century, and then we really, irrevocably screwed over the human race (and all species, really).¹ We began to mess with the environment too much in the 1800s, with the industrial revolution and large-scale coal mining and such, but until warfare (and medicine, too, I guess) escalated to the level of developing radioactive, nuclear, chemical, and plastic materials that were then adopted large-scale for every-day applications, we weren't that bad off.

Parts of Silent Spring cite various studies on how long certain chemicals remain in your system and how they can be passed on to a fetus. It also touches upon the idea that one pesticide spraying in one corner of the country can (and likely will) affect people all across the country or further, due to runoff, groundwater, rain, migratory animals, trade of goods, etc. In addition to this, it talks about scale (ie: raising one crop in a large area; blanket pesticide spraying rather than spot-treatment) and how that completely alters biodiversity, killing off necessary predators or food supplies, *creating* pest problems where there never were any previously, and thus ruining the way an ecosystem is meant to keep itself in check. Reading all of this combined, along with when individual events occurred (such as when DDT was created, when large scale spraying started, etc.), it dawned on me that my parents' generation were most likely all born with at least trace amounts of man-made, non-natural, toxic chemicals in their systems. More importantly (to me at least) they were the *first* generation where this would be the case. Think about that - until a little over 50 or so years ago, we were born as all-natural, clean biological slates. And we likely never will be again, due to the fact that the nature of a carnivorous food chain necessarily amplifies toxins further up the chain.²

This kind of reading brings up all kinds of rambling and cyclical streams of thought for me. Like the irony in buying gear made of man-made, unnatural, toxic (in some part of the process or another) materials for going out and enjoying nature. Nalgenes, primaloft, polarfleece, coolmax, ripstop nylon, vibram soles, gore-tex, lycra... none of these exactly grow on trees. How many unnatural, toxic materials are in your home right now? Could we ever change that? It's all so day-to-day, but it wasn't until the last century. To what extent do we need to revert for our long-term survival? How do we come to grips psychologically with being born into a world that our race has trashed, not being ok with that, and feeling helpless to fix it? (or am I the only one who is kept up at night by that kind of thing?)

¹I intend to follow this up with The World Without Us and some Gaia hypothesis readings in an attempt to further develop my opinion on whether or not our damage to the environment is irrevocable, but given half-lives of radioactive elements, and given what I know of our current methods for dealing with Superfund sites (my understanding being that most hazardous waste cleanup consists of containment and burial, with exceptions of relatively few cases where aeration, introduction of targeted bacteria, application of a neutralizing chemical, etc. can have an affect), I view it as pretty irrevocable. I should also read up more on current research on hazardous waste cleanup, since I haven't really researched that much since high school and hopefully there's been some progress in a decade.

²This is most definitely true when you look at it like this: one leaf has nPPM (parts per million) of chemical x on it; 1 bug eats 200 leaves; 1 fish eats 200 bugs; by the time a person eats that fish, the PPM is much, much higher. This is an over-simplification of it, as there are also various chemical reactions that take place within the body (sometimes neutralizing a toxin, but often converting it to something more toxic), not all people eat fish, larger creatures may have a higher tolerance for a given chemical (or some creatures of the same type or size may be immune to what will kill another), etc. But that's the basic gist of how toxins are amplified in the food chain.
The part that I get fuzzy on though, is whether or not there's a breaking point. Do we flush the chemicals after a certain concentration, or after a certain amount of time? Will we adapt to convert the chemicals to something less toxic in our systems? Does the exponential increase in population actually dilute the average amount of toxins in any given person if we cease to pump new toxins into our environment? I mean, if the amount of toxins on the planet is fixed (which is a totally hypothetical situation), surely eventually they'll be diluted in every creature as creature populations grow. But, unless they decompose over time, the fixed total quantity of toxins on the planet can never drop, right?

Mercury in Retrograde

2008-05-29T18:00:53Z

So I don't know why astrology has any bearing on reality, there's no logical, scientific explanation for it, but at least certain aspects of astrology undeniably seem to affect reality in my opinion. One of these aspects is communications being all screwy when Mercury is in retrograde. Not that I've followed astrology at all in years, nor do I talk to most of the people I used to any more who would know what alignments the planets are in at any given time.

But then someone entirely unexpected (Jake's mom) said to me today, as an explanation for something, "Mercury is in retrograde". I thought "Huh, that would explain so much in the past few days. But that totally couldn't be true for this past weekend". I looked it up, and sure enough, Mercury went into retrograde on Monday. It comes out of retrograde on June 19. Well there you go then, that explains my week.

finally spring!?!?!?

2008-05-28T01:43:12Z

There is a cool (but warm enough for a tank top) pre-storm breeze blowing through my house. Ah :)

Ah, the sounds of morning at a geek house:

2008-05-27T00:55:19Z

Katie (at computer): God dammit!
Chris (to Katie, from the other room where he's using the Wii): What?
Katrina (using Wii): Where's the star? I don't have all my starry bits!
Katie (replying to Chris): It's the wrong color portal!
Katrina: How do I open it?
Chris: Shoot it?

I recall there being some expletives, "what?!?" and more "god dammit"s thrown in there.

I'm alive

2008-05-06T03:53:21Z

does anyone read this anymore? no? I wouldn't either, I don't post anything interesting, witty, or insightful. To continue that trend:

Endgame wasn't very much fun, mostly because it was cold and wet the entire time, plus, due to poor timing and other factors, I never got dinner on Saturday. Playing with guns was fun though, and their site's pretty cool, and the game system is way easier than nero, and I like the world concept, and that you don't need to know hundreds of years of made-up history, 15 or so of which current players were around for and will argue about. I liked everyone there well enough, but didn't really click with anyone. I think I would have enjoyed it if I went with a friend (Steph doesn't count, as I hardly saw her, and she was generally snapping at me when I did), and if the weather had been reasonable.

dammit

2008-04-06T01:38:41Z

I totally thought the Gaelic Storm MA shows were further out. Nope, they're this week. And all three (2 at the Iron Horse and 1 in Natick) are all sold out. Grrr!

amethystmoon @ 2008-04-01T15:35:00

2008-04-01T19:36:30Z

There are hurricane force winds out there. And even still, it's not really cold. Yay spring!