I know, I know

Yes, I am a slacker. I don't mean to be, but I am.

Turns out I'm having trouble fitting in the things I *want* to do with all the things I *have* to do. So, something has to move around and make room.

I'm making room.

I have tons I want to write about. Partly because there is lots of stuff that I need to get out of my brain and process on a screen, but also partly because I need to re-find my way to what kind of blogging I will do now that my life is rather different in many ways.

Here goes nothing.

Entering the 21st Century

Check it out! I'm blogging from my phone! Who knew there would be an app for that?

Now, it's just a matter of whether I really want to write posts on my phone, what with the annoying autocorrects it tries to force on me and the thumb cramps that are inevitable.n the plus side, though, I'm laying in bed with my computer in the other room, and I'm still able to post. That's a pretty sweet tradeoff, and just might be worth the thumb cramps.

So, now that I've entered the realm where the smartphone intersects the blogosphere, you just might hear from me more often.

You're welcome.

The Number 400

Having started this blog journey on October 6, 2005, it only took me 1297 days to complete the first 400 posts. That's an average of a new post every 3.2 days. I'm no high-volume Nellie, but it's nothing to sneeze at, either. Honestly, I'm surprised that 3+ years out, I'm still doing this.

I want to thank my readers out there (all three of you!) for continuing to come back after my various hiati (hiatuses didn't look right). I appreciate you.

Facebook

I have finally succumbed to the peer pressure and joined the pile of people on Facebook. Huh. "Succumbed" really looked wrong, but apparently I spelled it right anyway. Ahem.

So, I made a Facebook page, and friended lots of people, and then came to another realization. While I have figured out how to have the "Yes, I'm still in the office. GB and I separated," conversation and strugging off the "Well, at least you don't have kids," or "I'm so sorry," line with the requisite head tilt, I hadn't quite planned on the electronic commenting about the subject. I still go back and forth between just being straightforward about it, and trying to avoid the topic because I don't feel like doing the (now) standard back-and-forth.

It was fun trying to make my profile reflect that I'm living in Austin but that my home is in Santa Barbara. And you can't imagine the waffling that went into setting my marital status.

My electronic existence is now larger. I'm ambivalent about that, but I do know I still prefer the blog to the one-line updates on people.

Congrats to Matt and Constance!

I am currently more excited for two people I wouldn't know from anyone else on the street than should be strictly allowed. After two solid years of trying, and at least 18 months of blogging about it, they have just found out they are pregnant. Please jump over to http://www.maybebabyblog.com/?p=258 and congratulate them at this joyous time for them. Knowing their official pregnancy test was today, I've been refreshing their site like a madwoman waiting for news. And, yes indeedy, congratulations are in order. Woohoo!

The Post That Shouldn't Be

This is a phantom post. I set it up to post while I couldn't physically be posting, because I'm on a plane to Texas to see the baby sister graduate from high school. Just thought it would be fun to throw that out there for you.

Where Ye Be Going?

In a recent perusal of the keywords that have brought unsuspecting people to HIAHS, I found some special selections. These are generally phrases that really make me wonder how search engines work. In the "Go Figure" category, we have:

court martial for heather post -- Currently, I'm wondering if Heather Post is being court martialed, or if someone was looking for a post on the court martial of a more generic Heather. Regardless, there is no past, present or future court martial for this Heather, so you may want to move along.

green jelly -- Apparently, once upon a time, I had a Friday Random Ten that included a song by a group of this name. Never even knew I had such a band reflected in my collection. Clearly from a mish-mash CD of random stuff. Meanwhile, if you are hoping to find out about jelly made from pears or granny smith apples or grapes or jalepenos, you should look elsewhere. At least until I post the recipe for such things.

french bread varieties -- I'm no expert, but I thought there was just the one variety. You know, French bread. For more options, find someone who knows stuff.

derailleur? i hardly knew her! -- People actually put these kinds of things in search engines?

chicken marsala when you are pregnant -- I can vouch for chicken marsala being tasty, but I have no insight into how that might taste when you're pregnant.

Also, in the "Maybe I should Collegify My Vocabulary" category, apparently "um yeah" and "eh" also brought people to my blog. Of course, if that's how they are searching, I assume their expectations of the content here should be similarly low, and that could be a good thing...

Recipes are Good Blog Fodder

Last week I was in North Carolina visiting my sister. I was there to go to her graduation and her commissioning as a Naval officer, and stuck around the whole week, because traveling from one coast to another and back just for a weekend seems silly. I worked from her apartment for the week while she went to work, and then we hung out at night doing various things -- chilling in bars where a guy tried to pick up yours truly, doing karaoke where another guy tried to do the same, sucking at trivia, and just generally drinking too much and being out too late. It was a good week.

Anyway, by Friday night, I was pretty tired. My sister informed me it was my job to plan our evening's festivities, and I was really itching to cook. So I did. And I even had access to recipes from home, just via an internet connection.

Isn't the internet grand?

Future Dating will Save Me

I clearly suck at posting. When I do post, I find myself wanting to write 3-4 posts and then if I post them all, people will be back the next day expecting more. And then I just imagine all their depressed faces when they notice it's been 6 weeks since my last entry. I hate the idea that I am adding so much sadness to the world (can you all detect the sarcasm dripping off my fingers?), and now Blogger has come to my rescue. I will now be able to put together all my crazy posts, and then space them out to keep you coming back for more. Because that's what I'm all about. Type-written whoring of my self for your consumption.

I hope you're all a little happier.

* This post future-dated, just for fun.

Blind Date

I know I've been MIA for a while, but traveling and house-buying and general craziness has been going on. I'll be filling you in on all those things that have already passed, but in the meantime, I wanted to tell you about my blind date from yesterday.

Yes, I went on a blind lunch date yesterday. It was in response to a Craigslist personal ad. It is as sad and pathetic as it sounds. And it went loverly.

I've decided that this whole trying-to-make-friends thing is WAY harder than I expected it to be. I knew I worked from home and I knew I wouldn't have a lot of ways to meet people, but I really expected everyone in this town not to be so, well, old. There are college kids over by campus, but I've been out of college a long time now. I've met some people watching basketball at sports bars, but they are all widowed men over 70. Not, precisely, my type for the casual friendship. Now, if I wanted a sugar daddy, I'm sure I'd have no trouble. But, see, I don't want a sugar daddy. I've met some wonderful ladies at my church, but I'm younger than the group I know by a good 20 years. At least. Lovely ladies, but not likely to join me for a cocktail on a Friday night. My neighbors avoid me like the plague. I'm assuming that's just carryover from the previous owner who everyone seems to have hated, rather than something aimed at me for all the wild parties we host here. Even the people standing next to me in lines look at me like a mental assylum escapee when I try to strike up conversations with them. It's like I violate every known rule of polite society when I go to the grocery store.

So, I responded to a few personal ads from other desperate women, like me, looking for that elusive friendship in this town. The first face-to-face meeting was lunch, yesterday. I really felt like I was prepping for a date. I referred to it as my blind date with GB, which made him just laugh at me. I was nervous, and prepped a few conversation re-starting questions, should they be necessary. Would she like me? Would she think I'm a dork? Would we have anything to talk about? Would she be fake? Will I hope to get that hour of my life back?

It turns out I had nothing to fear. Heather and I hit it off immediately. How couldn't we? -- we have the same name! After the two-hour lunch, with margaritas, we wandered over to the rose garden, which is just exploding with smells and beauty this spring. After a few more hours, we headed to our respective homes with vehement statements about how we must do this again, real soon.

I have my next blind date from this experience on Monday for Happy Hour. Be sure to check back to see how that went. Already, though, I feel better. My meeting on Monday is likely to have so many less nerves than yesterday did. Maybe I should have done a practice blind date to prepare for it....

November Food Experiment Results

I'm going to start to try to catch up on all the posting I should have been doing in the last month. Almost a month ago, one of the most amazing things to come my way actually happened. I became a published writer. Two weeks ago, I even got a check for that. Crazy, huh? I'm a physics degreed programmer with minimal creative leanings, and here I've actually gotten my words affixed to printed paper that I didn't send to my local printer. It's a little surreal, but I'd appreciate it if you click the link to see for yourself. Since I'm guessing the link will go away at some point, so, I'll reprint it below for your future review.

30 Meals, 1,000 Dishes
A Cooking Challenge of Unusual Proportion
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, December 13, 2007
By Heather Tufts

Out of boredom and the desire to challenge myself with a simple cooking experiment came the idea to test my stubborn persistence: make a unique homemade dish every day for a month. To bring this one zany idea to fruition I needed:
• 28-31 days
• 18 trips to 5 markets
• 9 cuisines from around the world
• 6 new recipes
• 1 spectacular failure
• 2 cookbooks
• salt and pepper with friends to taste
Set aside a few selected meals intended for guests, so you don’t use the prime recipes before their time. Next, head to the store to pick up the necessary items for the next few days. Wash the dishes that are sitting, dirty, in the sink, but only those that you need to make the current meal. Prepare and serve, preferably to adventurous friends who gush over your talent in the kitchen. Stare at the dirty dishes. Vow to do them all tomorrow and get the kitchen all cleaned up. Go to bed, and repeat for one month.

Some of the more notable results followed:

Szechuan Fried Fish — We all must start somewhere, and my roots are in Hong Kong and China. So, in the beginning it was good.

Pork Tenderloin — Again, I showed my roots with a garlic, ginger, and soy marinade. The tenderloin was seared before roasting just to medium. Why do so many people overcook pork?

Taco Stew — This is one of those meals where the hardest part is operating the can opener. It’s really soup, but my husband, won’t eat soup. So, when he’s around, it’s "stew."

Parmesan-Crusted Snapper — This dish was most notable for the fact that it was the most hideously awful meal I made all month. It smelled like feet and I couldn’t stomach more than a couple bites. Of course, my husband ate it anyway, including the leftovers. I guess there’s really no accounting for taste.

Lentil Chili — Since I have relatives from Texas, I would appreciate it if no one told them that I made a meatless chili (with beans, even!), and especially not that I liked it.

Balsamic Vinegar and Oil with Pasta — Two weeks in and I was hitting the backsplash. My husband generously offered to make the meal I told him to make, but only because it has less than five ingredients.

Other — I may have missed a meal in here somewhere. Let’s try not to harp on that, shall we?

Bulgogi — This is an easy meal (literally “fire meat” in Korean) to make, and a terrible one to have to clean up.

Mardi Gras Pasta — All you fusion chefs out there, eat your heart out on my Cajun-Italian entry.

Szechuan Fried Chicken — I know this may look like my entry from day one, but I promise, they are nothing alike. And I cannot tell a lie.

French Toast — With my husband out of town for work, I decided I could break the rules and eat breakfast for dinner.

Hoi Sin Chilean Sea Bass — This must’ve turned out well. Two weeks later, my dad is still talking about how good it was. I was just happy that Mom helped me with the dishes.

Penne Arrabiata — I love the irony of serving “angry” pasta to my parents.

Thanksgiving — I made the full traditional spread, from turkey and dressing to homemade apple pie and ice cream. It’s my favorite meal of the year. No planning necessary.

Tortilla Soup — This is really nothing like the Taco Stew, which is mostly beans. It’s just a flavorful broth to spoon over avocados and chips and cheese.

Thai Basil Chicken — Delicious, but its only resemblance to the food of Thailand was the use of native basil.

Shrimp Curry — I made this meal with a can of Yeo’s Singapore Curry Gravy. Really good stuff when you’ve only got 45 minutes to make curry.

Lamb Ragoût — A brilliant success, which will likely make it into the regular dinner rotation in the future.

Ham and Mushroom Waffles — Again, this isn’t a repeat of my French-Toast-for-dinner meal. When you put Swiss cheese and buttermilk with ham and mushrooms and pour it all over cornmeal waffles, it’s dinnertime somewhere.

Chicken Marsala — Twenty-nine days into the month and I was just cooking on autopilot. I’m pretty sure I ate it, but I can’t remember.

Green Chicken Enchiladas — I finished the month with a lovely stacked enchilada done in the Crockpot, which is my favorite kitchen appliance, so it seemed a fitting way to end the month’s effort.

A freezer full of leftovers

If I learned anything from this month of cooking, it’s that I hate to do dishes. We’ve got to get one of those fancy dishwasher things … and a garbage disposal … and maybe one of those water sprayers for the sink. That would be nice. I also learned that I really only use two cookbooks. I’m not sure why I have all the others on the shelf, but I constantly refer to Solomon’s The Complete Asian Cookbook and Hazan’s The Classic Pasta Cookbook. Everything else is either one of Mom’s recipes or an improvisational masterpiece (or a parmesan-crusted disaster). Finally, and most unexpectedly, I found that I don’t really like to eat my cooking. I lost three pounds this month cooking something new every day, and I didn’t have three pounds to lose. I think this has to do with the fact that after shopping and prepping and cooking and tasting, I just am not interested in the meal when it gets to the table. I would love to hear if other people take this challenge and come to a similar conclusion. It could be the next diet phenomenon to sweep the nation — “cook more, eat less.”

But next time, someone else can do the dishes.

Kinda surreal. But it was a lot of fun, and I'm glad I had the opportunity. It's always neat to see how these things sometimes happen. No worries, I haven't quit my day job, but it was a fun little diversion.

Where Is Heather?

I was reading Snick's latest post, and she summed up how I feel right now, perfectly.

I'm all out of practice. I think part of the problem is that I have so much to blog about right now that I don't know where to start.

And that's me, too. I'm just too overloaded with things to share that I hardly know where to start. But I will be working to get caught back up soon. Part of it seems that I only have a certain number of posts in me per year. And since I posted (nearly) every day in November, I'd used up my posting quota, and nothing more could be posted.

So, please don't abandon me, like I've abandoned you. I will have some posts about past events mixed in with current events, but I expect you will have no trouble keeping up with me. The issue is much more of an issue the other direction.

The Bloggin' Is A-Comin'

I have joined NaBloPoMo, which I found out about from Snickollet. It does virtually nothing, except indicate that I have promised to post every day in the month of November. And now that I'm on their blogroll, I guess there's no backing out now.

And since I like a challenge, I've decided to combine this with something else. I know it's silly, and I don't even come close to posting every day, so that will be enough of a challenge, right? Regardless, I need more. Years ago, my husband and I discussed one of his zany ideas to never eat anything the same twice in the same month. I don't think I'm quite that crazy, but I will be planning to cook something different for dinner every night for a month. I'll post recipes along with the fun. Some of them may be recipes I've never tried before, and therefore will be a crapshoot as to whether they'll be any good. Others will be tried-and-true favorites that keep us coming to the dinner table night after night. Well, those recipes and the hunger.

And now that I cook a lot (and am not going anywhere for Thanksgiving, so you'll get all my Turkey day recipes, too), I'm really thinking this should be doable. Here are my rules for myself on this:

1. It's the main dish that counts and can't be duplicated, not the sides. If it's a one-dish meal, then the whole meal counts.
2. Leftovers should be eaten for lunch, or frozen if we find we are becoming overwhelmed with too much food (I'm a German/Scandinavian Lutheran Texan -- a combo that always seems to result in more food than people to eat it).
3. If eating out for dinner looks likely, cook for lunch or breakfast instead. No cheating!!
4. No making up for a missed meal the next day.
5. No prepared meals -- the main dish must be homemade.
6. I can blog about other things, too, but I have to blog about our progress on this goal.

Okay, I think that's enough. Get ready for November!

Categories Are Fun

So, I've finally entered 2005 and started to categorize my blog entries. Of course, that could be because Blogger forced me to upgrade to their next version, and it does categories/labels by default. So, the other day I made up some categories and went back through my old posts and put them in the new areas. I hope you enjoy them. One day I might even update my template to the new format, and fix it up to be fancy like other people's blogs. Or I might just continue to compel you to come to my site for the witty banter and wonderful storytelling. HA!

If things start changing over here at Strangeness, it's not my fault. Blogger made me do it.

Problems with Drafting

I promise that this is not a post about bicyle racing.

Instead, I am starting to notice an issue with writing a first draft of a post, and then planning to go back and review it to finalize it and post it, but I never do. And after a month or two, the content is no longer relevant or I have no desire to finish the post, or whatever, and that post falls into the blogbog, never to be heard from again.

Why don't I finish posts when I start them? Sometimes I don't have time to finish it all the way. Sometimes I'm worried that I've posted too much at one time and then that will lead to weeks of nothing to post about. Sometimes I'm still trying to think through some of the thoughts before I post something rambling and without a coherent argument. Other times I'm concerned I've written a post that's too revealing or belongs on a blog entitled HIAHSelfishness or HIAHMeanness or HIAHCynicism. Regardless, the result is the same: the post never sees the light of the blog.

I hadn't really been able to understand why this phenomenon was occurring, until I read this post from an author whose blog I stumbled onto. As Ms. Cabot points out from her experiences (she actually hates outlining, not drafting):

But the truth is, story ideas don't come along often, and when they do, you have to treat them with care. Outlining them too thoroughly—even TALKING about them too much over coffee with a friend--can actually ruin them, because it can make you feel as if the story is already told.

I kinda feel this way about some of my posts. Maybe it's just because blog posts are generally so short that it seems silly to go through an editing/review phase. It could also be because I don't possess the discipline to draft and edit. I don't really know, since I haven't done much writing beyond college papers, technical documentation, and custom work estimates.

I'm now going to save this as a draft so I can go get ready and get to church on time. :)

- - -

I'm back now. I edited a few things above, but mostly I'm done now. I just want to let you know that I will no longer be saving my posts as drafts to be reviewed and finished later. I will also be working through my current backlog of posts that are in various stages of completeness, and getting those out there. I hope you'll enjoy a little more raw posting, and a little less cleaned up versions of the random crap in my brain.

Thoughts on Blogging

I've decided I must not be committed enough to the blogging concept. It appears that most of the interesting blogs I read (rather than the ones that aren't interesting) do a whole lot more stuff than I do here at HIAHS.

Pictures: Other bloggers seem to use pictures. We have a digital camera, but it is always in my husband's possession, so I never have access to it. Taking film pictures and scanning them is just silly. I could search for associated pictures on the internet, but am (apparently) too lazy to figure out how to add that to my blog. I'm just words with nothing pretty to look at.

Tags: Other bloggers categorize their posts to allow for better searching of their content. There are custom categories, and technorati categories, and del.i.cious categories, and other bloggers use these nifty little tools. This has just always seemed like too much effort to get started (do I have to recategorize all my old posts, etc.), and so I haven't done it.

Counters: Other bloggers know how many people come to read their blogs. It seems they also know what domain those folks came from (allowing extrapolation to country of origina, etc.). I went looking for one of those nifty programs once before, but the first one I found cost money, so I quit looking.

Searches: Other bloggers know what searches are used to allow people to find their blogs. This seems to be linked to the previous part about counters -- maybe it's the same software? Regardless, I don't really think people find my blog randomly, so I don't imagine there are too many interesting search criteria used to get here.

Then, there is the fact that a lot of other folks just seem to post way more often than I do. They either have way more interesting lives, or they find topics or regular themes or something else to motivate additional post-fodder. I know we're all supposed to live our own lives and not worry about keeping up with the Joneses, but I just keep asking myself why I go to other people's blogs, and whether there are some things I could do to make my blog more appealing to the masses.

And then I realize that would take a lot of time and effort. Time and effort that I'm not really willing to commit to blogging. And so my few readers will continue to be stuck with no pictures, no categorization of posts, no counters, and no recaps of what searches brought readers here. And I will continue to be content that my posts don't garner 50 comments apiece. And I'll keep enjoying reading the blogs of people who do choose to spend that much time on their blogs. And I'll stop starting sentences with "And."

What? A Year of This Crap?

Today is my one-year blogging anniversary. I've probably learned something about myself this year, but then again, maybe I haven't. Mostly I've just rambled on about things that, together, interest no one but myself. Or maybe that's just the sentiment of a person that hopes they're more unique than they really are.

Regardless, I thank you for the opportunity to bore you with my stories, and I hope to continue to do more of the same. And maybe throw a few interesting ones in there, too, just to keep you guessing.

Presenting the New Site

After tinkering with the look of this blog for quite some time, I decided to just replace the whole durn thing. So here you go -- a new look to start into a new month. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to comment. I may or may not get around to incorporating your comments into the look in the next year or so. How's that for commitment?

Schizophrenia Runs Rampant

Looking over just a few months of blog entries, I've figured out my problem. I have no one topic to focus on. I run my mouth, er, fingers over whatever random topic comes to mind. I've read blogs that can be characterized by one topic, and ones that tend to stick with 3-5 topics that maybe even go together. These seem coherent. Almost like novels that flow from chapter to chapter. But not mine. I am left to assume that the disorganization on the screen is a reflection of the disorganization in my mind, and that led me to the conclusion that I'm schizophrenic.

Now, I'm a highly-functioning schizophrenic, in that I can hold down a job and generally maintain friendships. I haven't needed drugs to control my disease or hospitalization to keep me from killing anyone or harming myself. But there it is -- with no focus, there must be something wrong with me.

Or maybe, I'm a hypochondriac labeler.

Slow Modifications

The two people who come to this blog (one of them being myself) may have noticed that this blog is on a very slow train to transformation. I started with a nice stock blog template, and am slowly changing it to better match my tastes and desires for this page. Unfortunately for you, I am not doing this quickly. Rather, it is like Chinese water torture: one drip of change here, and another drip there. It's likely to take me a good decade to change this page into the page I have envisioned in my head. I understand HTML, but I don't write enough of it to be very good at it. Meanwhile, I want to apologize to you for the mismatched colors in the meantime. I hope to keep it from gouging out your eyes, but I can't guarantee that.