Loco moco, a Hawaiian favorite. I am neither Hawaiian nor have I ever been to Hawaii, I just read about it and then found a recipe online.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Saturday, January 14, 2012
"Fun" at lunch
This was how I spent my lunch "hour" yesterday. I'm fine and so is the car, but it was still not exactly a fun experience.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Never leggo my LEGO
An acquaintance on Facebook posted a link to BrickLink in a comment to one of my many status updates. I say "acquaintance" because no friend would post such a thing, not in a reply to someone like me. An enemy sure would - maybe I have my very first frenemy. I love LEGO, I have always loved LEGO, and my kids have inherited my love of LEGO, so that site is potential Kryptonite to my household budget. Take a gander at the vintage space sets, for instance. Looking back at the sets from 1979, either I was very good that year or the Sears catalog had one heck of a sale on the entire collection, because I remember building and playing with most of them. In fact, a whole lot of the space sets from 1979-1982 are pretty familiar. I distinctly remember that my very first "grown up kid" LEGO set was the space shuttle, and I built and rebuilt the Alpha-1 Rocket Base many times. But I had forgotten about many of the others, the mobile tracking station and mobile rocket launcher, the X1 patrol craft, space cruiser, cosmic cruiser and several others. I suddenly remembered them all and resisted the immediate urge to purchase them to reconnect with my childhood.
Which is in itself odd, because I still have them. I just don't know where they are exactly. I have somewhere between 80-90% of my childhood toys packed away in storage. LEGO, Star Wars, Transformers, GI Joe, Hotwheels, who knows what else. A big emphasis on "who knows." I was a very careful and conscientious child, careful not to lose a single piece or gun or whatever if I could help it. No, not obsessive compulsive... well, maybe a smidge OCD. When I moved out after college, I took it all with me. Unlike a lot of young adults, I didn't come home to find my things had been brought down to the dump 5 minutes the day after I moved into a dorm. Most likely because everyone knew that I'd leave and never return if that happened (I left and never returned anyways, so whatever). So I have a good portion of those LEGO sets still... somewhere. I am not one of those extreme hoarders you see on TV, I swear! Well, maybe a smidge of that, too.
Which is in itself odd, because I still have them. I just don't know where they are exactly. I have somewhere between 80-90% of my childhood toys packed away in storage. LEGO, Star Wars, Transformers, GI Joe, Hotwheels, who knows what else. A big emphasis on "who knows." I was a very careful and conscientious child, careful not to lose a single piece or gun or whatever if I could help it. No, not obsessive compulsive... well, maybe a smidge OCD. When I moved out after college, I took it all with me. Unlike a lot of young adults, I didn't come home to find my things had been brought down to the dump 5 minutes the day after I moved into a dorm. Most likely because everyone knew that I'd leave and never return if that happened (I left and never returned anyways, so whatever). So I have a good portion of those LEGO sets still... somewhere. I am not one of those extreme hoarders you see on TV, I swear! Well, maybe a smidge of that, too.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Conversation with my son
I was sitting at the dining room table after dinner last night, watching Hawaii Five-O on Netflix and doodling in the margin of today's newspaper. Just 3-D geometric shapes, nothing fancy. My 9 year old son came over and wondered what I was doing,
Sam: "Did you draw these?"
Me: "Yep."
Sam: "Wow, I thought these were printed and not drawn. You are really talented."
Me: "Thanks, Sam! You know, I did take art classes for 6 years."
Sam: "I thought your parents didn't let you go to art school."
Me: uh-oh, little jugs have big ears "This was in high school. High school and junior high actually. I also took about a year's worth of art classes in college. Painting and drawing."
Sam: "I didn't know that you took those classes. I want to be an artist someday."
Somebody earned his Christmas presents this year!
Sam: "Did you draw these?"
Me: "Yep."
Sam: "Wow, I thought these were printed and not drawn. You are really talented."
Me: "Thanks, Sam! You know, I did take art classes for 6 years."
Sam: "I thought your parents didn't let you go to art school."
Me: uh-oh, little jugs have big ears "This was in high school. High school and junior high actually. I also took about a year's worth of art classes in college. Painting and drawing."
Sam: "I didn't know that you took those classes. I want to be an artist someday."
Somebody earned his Christmas presents this year!
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
I am bad at taking vacations
My employer has a use it or lose it policy when it comes to vacations and I had 4.5 days to use, so I'm using it this week. In theory, that is. In practice, I worked yesterday until about 4:30 pm. I wasn't working the entire time as I was letting some tests run in the background and installing some long-delayed software upgrades, but I was not exactly on vacation, either.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Baby, it's cold inside
As I write this, 11 pm on a Sunday night in December, it is 46 degrees in my home office. It should be no surprise that I am not writing this in my office, because working inside of a walk-in refrigerator is not exactly conducive to writing or any kind of work. Same with most forms of recreation, too, since it is a home office after all. But this is what I have to work with - an unheated, semi-insulated attic space that, due to the strange configuration of my house, isn't itself above any heated space from which it could draw some sort of residual heat. It is just cold. Very, very cold.
I heat the space using a portable oil-filled heater but it just cannot pump out the BTUs to heat the space beyond around 25 degrees above the outside temperature. Given I live in an area that gets down to 0 Fahrenheit regularly and has gone as low as -20 a few winters, this is more than a minor inconvenience. I have tried various portable heaters, from ceramic to forced air (just not powerful enough) to a parabolic heat discs (okay if you are in the heated zone, expensive to operate and dangerous with kids). An oil-filled heater has so far been the best combination of cost, heat and safety, but it still cannot do the job.
That affects, of course, how I do my job. I work from home but I am not required to work there or have a home office. It is strongly encouraged to have a dedicated space, however, even though we are allowed to work from libraries, coffee shops, or any place with a decent connection. But I work from home precisely so I don't have to commute anywhere. I've done my time, with 4 years doing a 5 hour round trip 4-5 days a week, and 4 more years with a 2.5 hour trip 5 days a week. Telecommuting is a perk of my current job and I want to make the most of it. The local library isn't open every week day and I don't want to be one of those guys parked in front of the library with a laptop for hours. There are lots of choices 30 minutes from here, but what's the point of working from "home" if there's still a commute, no matter how short?
During the work day in winter, I'm often wearing 4 layers - long underwear, regular street clothes, sweater or chamois shirt, and a hoodie, topped with a lap blanket, but I'm often still cold. There are, of course, other areas in the house where I could work and I often do, but I chose my space because it was in the back, away from the rest of the house and its associated noise. I could work downstairs in an old parlor off of the living and dining rooms, but my work day would then end at 3 pm, when the kids got home. By being far removed I can minimize distractions for the couple of hours until the end of the workday, but that would be impossible downstairs. Like many others, I also need a space to which I can simply retreat and be alone. Some men have a shop, some a "man cave" (ugh, I hate that insipid term. Show some dignity and call it a den), some have a home office like me.
Several years ago I got a quote for extending our existing steam system (it's an old house) which was basically "no you can't" that so I'd need a whole separate heating system installed at ridiculous expense. It wasn't even a replacement to the existing oil-burning boiler, just a second electric boiler and a second set of pipes running through my house, and the quote didn't include all the finish work involved to repair walls after the pipes were run through them. That is also the reason why I have resisted trying natural gas heaters or wood stoves. What if that too failed to heat the space, and now I was left with a hole in a wall or the roof that now needed repairing? Although, one of those triangular/conical center of the room fireplaces from the 1970s might be funky enough to try, especially if it was still painted in the delightful color schemes of the period. Avocado green or harvest gold, with sepia detailing.
I heat the space using a portable oil-filled heater but it just cannot pump out the BTUs to heat the space beyond around 25 degrees above the outside temperature. Given I live in an area that gets down to 0 Fahrenheit regularly and has gone as low as -20 a few winters, this is more than a minor inconvenience. I have tried various portable heaters, from ceramic to forced air (just not powerful enough) to a parabolic heat discs (okay if you are in the heated zone, expensive to operate and dangerous with kids). An oil-filled heater has so far been the best combination of cost, heat and safety, but it still cannot do the job.
That affects, of course, how I do my job. I work from home but I am not required to work there or have a home office. It is strongly encouraged to have a dedicated space, however, even though we are allowed to work from libraries, coffee shops, or any place with a decent connection. But I work from home precisely so I don't have to commute anywhere. I've done my time, with 4 years doing a 5 hour round trip 4-5 days a week, and 4 more years with a 2.5 hour trip 5 days a week. Telecommuting is a perk of my current job and I want to make the most of it. The local library isn't open every week day and I don't want to be one of those guys parked in front of the library with a laptop for hours. There are lots of choices 30 minutes from here, but what's the point of working from "home" if there's still a commute, no matter how short?
During the work day in winter, I'm often wearing 4 layers - long underwear, regular street clothes, sweater or chamois shirt, and a hoodie, topped with a lap blanket, but I'm often still cold. There are, of course, other areas in the house where I could work and I often do, but I chose my space because it was in the back, away from the rest of the house and its associated noise. I could work downstairs in an old parlor off of the living and dining rooms, but my work day would then end at 3 pm, when the kids got home. By being far removed I can minimize distractions for the couple of hours until the end of the workday, but that would be impossible downstairs. Like many others, I also need a space to which I can simply retreat and be alone. Some men have a shop, some a "man cave" (ugh, I hate that insipid term. Show some dignity and call it a den), some have a home office like me.
Several years ago I got a quote for extending our existing steam system (it's an old house) which was basically "no you can't" that so I'd need a whole separate heating system installed at ridiculous expense. It wasn't even a replacement to the existing oil-burning boiler, just a second electric boiler and a second set of pipes running through my house, and the quote didn't include all the finish work involved to repair walls after the pipes were run through them. That is also the reason why I have resisted trying natural gas heaters or wood stoves. What if that too failed to heat the space, and now I was left with a hole in a wall or the roof that now needed repairing? Although, one of those triangular/conical center of the room fireplaces from the 1970s might be funky enough to try, especially if it was still painted in the delightful color schemes of the period. Avocado green or harvest gold, with sepia detailing.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Christmas Cactus
Our Christmas cactus is in full bloom for the holidays
My 9 year old son collected house plants for a while but rarely watered them, so most of them were dead when he finally turned them over to me this September. I didn't think that this Christmas cactus would make it, let alone bloom this year. It was very withered and hadn't been watered consistently for months.
That's all that I did with it and these other rescue plants. Repot, water every two weeks (every week for the croton) with plant food and place in a sunny location. There's another shelf below this with more cacti and jades.
This next set of plants is the result of two years worth of careful watering. They were all part of a single plant that had been in my wife's family for decades but was starved for sun, water and attention. The core and roots were rotten and all that was marginally alive where the bits on the ends. After a bit of research one afternoon, I decided to chop off the salvageable pieces and see if any of them would grow. To my surprise, they have and now I've run out of room! The leftmost plant in the first photo was the largest surviving piece of the original plant. It seems to have been permanently stunted and has grown a few new leaves over two years, but not much. Subtract those leaves and it looks much like it did when I performed the surgery on it. The last photo is all that's left of the original plant. Only in the past few weeks has it been moved to a sunnier location, so what green that was left has been dormant the entire time.
My 9 year old son collected house plants for a while but rarely watered them, so most of them were dead when he finally turned them over to me this September. I didn't think that this Christmas cactus would make it, let alone bloom this year. It was very withered and hadn't been watered consistently for months.
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That's all that I did with it and these other rescue plants. Repot, water every two weeks (every week for the croton) with plant food and place in a sunny location. There's another shelf below this with more cacti and jades.
This next set of plants is the result of two years worth of careful watering. They were all part of a single plant that had been in my wife's family for decades but was starved for sun, water and attention. The core and roots were rotten and all that was marginally alive where the bits on the ends. After a bit of research one afternoon, I decided to chop off the salvageable pieces and see if any of them would grow. To my surprise, they have and now I've run out of room! The leftmost plant in the first photo was the largest surviving piece of the original plant. It seems to have been permanently stunted and has grown a few new leaves over two years, but not much. Subtract those leaves and it looks much like it did when I performed the surgery on it. The last photo is all that's left of the original plant. Only in the past few weeks has it been moved to a sunnier location, so what green that was left has been dormant the entire time.
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