It took not remotely long at all to ramp up from "Welcome back from two weeks off!" to "We're all in high-speed panic mode!" On Monday, spreadnparanoia's brother started working with us as an intern, and he dropped by my desk to say hi, and ask if I had a busy day ahead.

And I said "No, we're just getting back, so things are pretty slow. Everyone else seems to be scrambling, but all I really have to do today is check this week's print proofs and edit tomorrow's web pieces. Oh, and sort through a couple dozen emails and assign pieces for an inventory. Oh, and write a couple of DVD briefs and a game piece. And send out an AVQA solicitation. Oh crap, and edit cinema for the week and pull it together. And, well, I have to sort through all this mail, and get the books in it sent out to reviewers. And, uh, get the next month of book review assignments worked out. And actually I'm working on this book-editing project right now…"

He said watching my face as that all sank in was pretty hilarious.

Still, I got through all of that (except the book project, which is ongoing, oh and actually I still have to write those DVD briefs and the game piece), and I figured out a simple way to organize the book stuff, so simple it makes me feel stupid because I should have started doing it this way more than a year ago. And Monday night I came home burned out and useless, but last night I was able to come home, work on the book, make a nutritious healthy dinner (wild rice soup with asparagus and kale) that broke down neatly into leftovers for the week, dissect a cantaloupe into a couple of days' worth of breakfast, plant an indoor winter herb garden, do the dishes, de-polish my nails, and get some basic cleaning in. If I could be this productive every day, I would have a lot more time to freely lounge around on the fainting couches, eating bonbons. Which I seem to be doing none of just now for some reason.

Instead, I'm eating a lot of fruit. I don't know what's going on, but here in the dead of winter in Chicago, the fruit is diverse and awesome just now. In the past week, I've had some amazing Chilean cherries, some of the best oranges I've ever eaten, and some really terrific kiwi fruit. I have pears waiting for me at home, and the cantaloupe was really good too. I know there are other places in the world that aren't as bitterly cold and everything-dead-y as Chicago right now, but with the outside world currently so inimical to life, it's sort of weird to be eating some of the best tropical fruit ever. Not that I'm complaining, om nom nom nom.

Oh, and speaking of om nom nom, I only recently realized that it came from Cookie Monster, and that's why it became so instantly universal — half of us grew up watching him nom things. Here he is talking about it in a surprisingly erudite and philosophical recent interview:

I was just really proud of the dinner CMC and I pulled together last night, and I wanted to share. We had no plan, we just talked through what we had on hand and what we wanted, and it turned out amazingly well.

It all started with the acorn squash. We had one. CMC was going to get home earlier than me, so I asked him to just cut it in half and shove it in the oven and we'd figure out what to do with it later. Done and done.

I make some brown rice in chicken broth with sage and tarragon. I sautee some onion and garlic, throw those into the rice with some chopped walnuts. The squash have been in the oven for perhaps too long ("Hey, CMC? When did you put the squash in?" "Ummmmmm....?"), so we can't stuff-n-broil them, but wevs, they aren't burned. CMC brushes the squash with this citrus-infused olive oil that had been lurking in our pantry forever and hits the halves with salt and a butt-ton of pepper. He marinades a couple tuna steaks in soy and ginger, edges them with sesame seeds and sears them.

This meal... It is GLORIOUS. The squash plays very well with the citrus in the olive oil, which brings out extra tastiness in the tuna, and it all mellows nicely with the savory rice. And if I had sat down to plan it, it would never have come to pass. NOM.

About fifteen years ago, I made some fresh tofu.  I had a copy of  "The Book of Tofu", and some soybeans that I had liberated from my parents farm.  I remember it turning out quite well...

I haven't been that close to any harvests lately, and even the People's Republic of Oak Park is not granola enough to have a retailer offering organic soybeans in a bulk food bin.  But I've just found an organic farm that apparently makes wintertime pick-up deliveries to the Buzz Cafe.   Saturday afternoon, I'll be picking up organic soybeans for fifty cents a pound, and tofu experimentation will commence shortly thereafter.  If anyone else is looking for organic soybeans, let me know!

I've also been working on the quest to make the perfect chicken noodle soup.  I'm about eight gallons into the winter, and am still improving...

Stop what you are doing right now and listen up: I HAVE PERFECTED MY SEEDY BREAD RECIPE. I know you all thought it was perfect before, but you didn't know that it could be made perfecter. Now you know!


The secret is buttermilk! This is officially my new favourite bread. It is just as soft as bought bread and sooo much tastier. And cheaper! And better for you! Buttermilk, contrary to what I thought until yesterday, is not fatty milk. It's milk with good bacteria in it! It tastes kind of like plain yoghurt. Who'd-a-thunk-it. Anyways, it makes a pretty delish loaf of bread. Apparently you can also use it in salad dressings.

( Recipe )

See more at The Cast-Iron Darling!

I'm going to do a full write up of the Sid and CMC European Extravaganza later, when I have access to my pictures and such, but a couple things of note:

- Dutch culture has had an unfortunately small impact on Chicago food culture. I mean, culinarily speaking, my general impression of the Dutch was that they were into - and excelled at - Coffee, Cream, and Pastry. Any other component of the native cuisine was middling, but if it involved Coffee, Cream, and/or Pastry, you were in for a treat. The upshot of which is that I am distressed not to find oliebollen ANYWHERE in Chicago. This is sad beyond reckoning. (unless YOU know where I can find oliebollen! DO YOU? DO YOU KNOW!?!?)

- The best thing about coming back to the US was the ability to buy Actually Effective cold medications ANYWHERE WE GODDAMN SHOPPED. Whereas in Dublin and Amsterdam, we had to go to the pharmacies, which were inevitably closed for the holidays. The grocery stores, kiosks, and newsstands stocked cold remedies, true, but only of the aspirin and homeopathic lozenge variety. It was foolish of us, I know, to come down with horrible phlegmy colds right before our trip, but even more foolish not to buy armfuls of nuclear level decongestents at the airport pharmacy before going out into the pharmacy-less wastelands. Live and learn.

Hee hee hee. But they left out the "Black power!" fist-raise.

And of course now I have to find the original and figure out what these really mean. Aha, here we go.

ETA: Man, there are a lot of these out there. Including longer ones with signals for "Aim for the ass" and "There's no way I'm going in there." This guy claims he originated it, and seems so amused by all the copying and later iterations that I'm inclined to believe him.

Periodically, Cass will discover that he's outsmarted himself — that he had some critical piece of paperwork, or other item that he didn't want to lose, so he put it somewhere Incredibly Clever And Out Of The Way, and now he can't remember where it is. Or maybe he put off making some decision until he had more information, and then he realizes later that the decision still has to be made, but he forgot what the information was, or lost some other piece of information in the meantime.

At times like this, he usually excoriates his unhelpful past self thusly: "Curse you, Cass-Sub-1! Always one step ahead of me!"

I just had kind of the opposite thing happen. I've been cleaning my office, and I finally realized I'd sorted out every possible pile of accumulated stuff without finding the 2010 calendar I bought for my office months ago. I'd gotten pretty frustrated about it. But since I was throwing away a huge pile of stuff anyway, I took the 2009 calendar off its nail and tossed it in the garbage. Behind it, on the same nail, already hanging on the wall, I found the 2010 calendar. Clearly Tasha-Sub-1 was on the ball a couple months ago about where that calendar needed to go so I wouldn't lose it.

Speaking of calendars, I'm feeling fairly ruthless about all the Stuff in the house right now, and I'm cleaning out closets and getting rid of things, particularly dusty old things that have been sitting in the backs of closets for years, unneeded and untouched. One such thing I ran across was a cache of art calendars, the oldest of which was from 2003 — I'd kept them because I liked the art, and who knows, one day I might cut some of it out of the wall calendar and frame it or something. I think six years is long enough to wait and see whether I was going to get around to that; into the trash they go. Same with the vast heap of grimy old unloved posters, most of them mounted on cardboard and shrink-wrapped (with the shrink-wrap in tatters), and the pile of bulletin boards covered with filthy scraps of paper dating back to, in some cases, junior high. Goodbye extremely old in-jokes printed out on dot-matrix printers via long-defunct programs like Print Shop. Hellooooooooooooooo closet space.

I believe my sister is at her funniest when doing the banterz, but her solo rants sometimes give me giggle fits too. Case in point: today the whole family went to lunch and ran some errands together. We were walking back to the car, when suddenly, without a word of warning, Mom lunged into a nail salon, threw her arms around some woman's neck, and kissed her. (On the cheek, presumably. I missed it.) Dad and Tara and I all meandered on, being emotionally reserved types who generally do not want to engage with Mom-level gushy enthusiasts who will want to pinch our cheeks and babble about how much we've grown, or worse yet, kiss us. But when we got to the parking lot, Dad turned back to see if Mom had come out and was following us.

Whereupon Tara grabbed his arm and tugged him car-wards, announcing "She isn't coming out of there any time soon. Face it, she's lost to us! She's never coming back! You need to move on, Dad, you need to accept that she's gone! In fact, it's time you got over her and moved on with your life! That's what she would want! It's what she always said she would want! We know she loved you and would only want what's best for you! You're strong and will make it through this difficult time, thanks to the support of your loving daughters! Let's go!"

(We got in the car and drove over to the nail salon, where we sat for another five minutes before Mom emerged with her VERY SPIRITED AND ENERGETIC friend, who lunged halfway through my car window to shout in my ear about how she couldn't believe we didn't remember her, and to demand to know our ages and how long it had been and whatnot. I think Tara had the right idea and we should have run for our lives.)

But anyway. The other day Tara outdid herself with the ranting. She has a bitter running joke about how her life is cursed; every time something good happens to me, she rolls her eyes and says it must be nice to have an uncursed life. At some point I started bragging up my uncursed life, comparing us to Wolverine and Cyclops from X-Men II and pointing out that every time I reach into my pocket I find a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

So the other day we were shopping and I was looking at pants, and this happened:

Me: Ever since I found that store that was closing and bought a dozen pairs of jeans for $4 each, I've had trouble gearing myself up to pay $50 for a pair.

Tara: Why would you even need pants if you bought a dozen pairs of jeans?

Me: I lost a bunch of weight, so now I can't wear half of them.

Tara: Oh look at me, my name is Tasha and my life is NOT cursed, and it is so terribly hard! Why, I simply do not know what to do with myself sometimes! For instance, just the other day, I won the lottery, and now these stupid people appear every day and shower me with money! Sometimes I can barely even move because the money piles are so deep! And I'm all "Thank you, but I couldn't even spend all the money you gave me yesterday, because there was so much of it!" But they never listen! They just keep throwing money at me like crazy money people! And also everywhere I go, awesome people want to be my friend! Everybody famous and terrific is all like "You're that Tasha Robinson I've heard so much about, I would like you to come hang out with me on my private island, which I will take you to on my private jet while feeding you private grapes!" Also I have lost so much weight that I can barely even find clothing to fit me! I just walk into a store and everybody says "Oh no, all our clothes are too big for you, what will you even do now!" Oh, I am so TERRIBLY sympathizing with your miserable, hard, awful life!

Note that as she says all this, she's following me through the store, and I am trying not to fall over laughing. TRULY MY LIFE IS SO VERY UNCURSED AND DIFFICULT.

Hooray! In spite of clearly being some sort of wanted terrorist or felon or something, I was able to use advance check-in normally for my flight back from Maryland to Chicago. No more middle of the back row for me. Or massive anxiety about whether they'll let me on the flight.

Better yet, we're hearing that the TSA is already backing off the ridiculous policies recommended immediately after the Nigerian plane-bomber incident on Christmas. I actually lay awake the other night fuming over the idea of having to fly home without a book or any other "personal item" in hand for the last hour of a flight — the whole thing smacked of "One kid in the class acted up, so the rest of us will just sit here quietly with our hands folded for the rest of the period." The whole policy seemed more designed to make millions of travelers antsy, bored, and mad than to actually successfully prevent terrorist activity.

But now it sounds like I get to fly home AND read on the way, which is all I really ask for. I got two new Spider Robinson books for Christmas, and I'm looking forward to catching up with him after a long break. Speaking of which, his wife Jeanne is fighting cancer right now, and apparently the financial outlook isn't all that rosy, as it tends to not be when working artists have serious medical problems. So if you're a fan, this would be an excellent time to buy his recent books through his website, or check in for periodic benefit auctions on eBay, or even just donate to their medical fund via PayPal. And if you aren't a fan, I highly recommend reading Stardance, one of my favorite novels of all time, and becoming a fan.

So… I made bagels! Months ago, someone here — sorry, I no longer remember who — posted a link to a blog post about making homemade bagels, and I decided that was something I wanted to try at some point when I had several hours free for an essentially foolish project. (I've made many types of bread at this point, and always find it an interesting process that's really more trouble than it's worth.) But hey, I overvalue novelty and I like baking, and this seemed like an interesting project.

( Bagels, a work in progress… )

Some oven time later, et voilá! They actually look like real bagels, both inside and out. The taste was a little flat and disappointing, but that's because the recipe is ultra-basic, just flour, sugar, and moisture. At some point, I'd like to try the same technique on a more complicated recipe, like rye or sourdough or whole wheat. I'm betting those would come out really well. And these were tasty with butter or cream cheese or peanut butter or jelly, they just weren't very impressive entirely on their own, which is how I usually eat bagels.



Unsurprising moral of the story: Baking yeast bread products is still, as I said, a multi-hour project that's generally more trouble than it's worth. On the other hand, this recipe works fine, and it was neat to see in action and to know more about how bagels come to be.

Next step, if I have time tomorrow, on my last day in Maryland: making my own English muffins. Yay!

My primary thought on Avatar:

I'm thinking at this point that the story of the genocide of a close-to-the-land native people by a technologically superior, morally compromised people operating strictly out of greed and profit motive, is America's Holocaust Narrative. It's the story we keep telling ourselves over and over and over, partially out of guilt, partially out of hope that This Will Never Happen Again, partially because we know it's a topic freighted with easy emotion, which makes for dramatic cinema.

And I wouldn't dare theorize about which motive is most prominent in any given film or filmmaker. But the fact that we as a society haven't really learned much about NOT doing things for the profit motive gives the story an added depressing twist; we're still lamenting our selfish mistakes of past centuries while finding ways to repeat them now.

Avatar struck me as surprisingly adept at not just telling the same story over again. Yeah, it's riddled with clichés, including the nasty, narrow-minded warrior who's engaged to the chief's daughter and is the protagonist's all-in-one rival, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and sexually. But it isn't just a cowboys-vs.-indians story, it's about Iraq and Afghanistan and 9/11 and Middle East terrorism and the destruction of the rainforests and Blood For Oil and Western imperialism in general. I thought occasional AVC contributor Sam Adams did an excellent job of summing up the politics, and explaining why the film's messages are pretty shocking, in a way that even goes beyond countering the "support our troops" paradigm and encouraging audiences to cheer for the murder of American soldiers.

But as Sam says, critical response to the film has been focused far more on the mo-cap and the 3D and the technological developments than on the story. Which makes me wonder what Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea are getting out of it on a message level. Mostly what I got is "We're going to keep telling ourselves this story over and over as long as I live, but we're probably never going to actually LEARN anything from the telling."

And we are home. Huzzah.

Me: Look, there's a place in that strip mall called Kabobs And Pizza. Have you ever been there for pizza?

Mom: No, but I've been there for kabobs.

Me: Can you go in and get kabob pizza?

Tara: NO. It's Kabobs And Pizza, not Kabob Pizza! Can't you read?

Me: Couldn't you ask them to just leave out the And?

Tara: NO. Everything served there comes with extra And. It is non-negotiable!

Me: Aw, maaaaan.

Tara: Also with spam.

…and SCENE.

Every time I hang out with more than a couple members of my family, I become aware all over again that our sense of humor is TERRIBLE, predicated entirely on repetition, sarcasm, absurdist nonsense, cheap irony, and really bad puns. It's dumb, awful humor. I pity anyone subjected to it.

And yet as ashamed as I am of this humor, it's so comforting being around people who get it and go along with it. We all groan mightily at each other's jokes, but we laugh too, and we perpetuate them. We're terrible people, but at least we're comfortably all alike.

Well, Dad officially won Christmas.

For the last I don't even know how many years — eight, maybe? nine? — he's given me, my sister, and my mom each a single pair of socks every Christmas. Nice indoor socks, with the grippy non-skid pattern thingies on the bottom, or ultra-fuzzy chenille slipper-socks, but socks nonetheless. It's a running joke, where the first thing we'd open every year would be our identical squashy packages. Inevitably, because we think we are hilarious, someone would say "Why, what could THIS possibly be?" and everyone else would say "Oh, I have NO IDEA. Maybe it's a puzzle! Shake it and see what kind of noise it makes!" Every. Year. And he'd sit there and grin at us the whole time, and when we opened them, he'd say "Surprise! This is the year you get socks!" or some such.

I come by my ironic sense of humor honestly, through genetics.

This year, we observed the Sock Ritual as usual, but when we actually opened the packages, each one contained a single kinda grubby old athletic sock, wrapped around a $50 gift certificate for a local nail salon/spa. So Dad got the satisfaction of seeing all the Big Fake Shock melt into real actual shock. And he got to laugh as he pulled the rug out from under our sarcastic childish asses.

And today Mom and I went there and I got my first-ever manicure/pedicure. It's a little embarrassing to be mrph-ity years old and have never had a manicure or pedicure, and Mom and I have been talking about going together for many, many years now.

Well, there's one more rite of feminine passage observed, dutifully but very late. And frankly, it was interesting, but nothing to put up on the Lifetacular Accomplishments Wall. There were massage chairs and a footbath and a hot-rock leg massage, and I got my eyebrows waxed and had umpty billion gels and unguents and fixatives and lacquers applied to my fingernails and toenails, and had my hands and feet buffed and scrubbed with many things. And the end result is about what I would have gotten if I'd painted my nails at home. Except a little worse, because I thought my fingernails were finally dry and I could put my shoes back on my cold feet, but they weren't quite, and I smudged the thumbs. We could have gotten them fixed, but by that time we'd been there more than an hour, and we were running late and expecting guests, and we wanted to be out the door.

So hey, been there, done that, got the Girl Scout Badge, and may well never do it again. But it was a nifty Christmas present, and Dad gets points for innovation, for fooling us all, and for keeping a straight face while we mocked his sock-present for the ninth or tenth year in a row.

And next year, I can honestly say I'd rather get the socks. That's probably worth something to him too.

So I got back to Maryland without undue troubles. The lines at the airport weren't that bad. When I checked in, the computer told me "ADDITIONAL IDENTIFICATION VERIFICATION REQUIRED: PRESENT IDENTIFICATION TO AGENT," which meant to hand over my driver's license as usual. And something kinda weird did happen when I did; the lady behind the counter, who was punchy and joking around with me and everyone else around her suddenly frowned and went quiet and poked at her keyboard for five silent minutes. I was seriously expecting a hand on my elbow and "Will you come with me, please?" after the first few minutes. But then she handed me a boarding pass and told me my gate, and that was it. Maybe she was just frowny because she had to go through some lengthy procedure to prove I was me. I was so startled and relieved that I didn't ask, I just went to my gate and watched a movie while I waited for the next three hours. My flight was half an hour late, but considering there were ruffled-looking people desperately waiting for standby on every flight around me, people who had clearly been there for a while and were going through Hardships, I counted myself extremely lucky that I hadn't been trying to travel a day earlier. And I even managed to get an aisle seat next to a lovely young man and his very well-behaved small daughter, and my luggage even arrived at the airport when I did, so I consider myself preposterously fortunate.

Since then, I've fallen into the reverie I always seem to wind up in when I get to Maryland. I went out by myself and did some last-minute shopping. I made Nanaimo Bars and cherry-almond shortcake dough, which we'll bake tomorrow. I've been staying up too late and sleeping a lot and spending a lot of time talking to my mom and showing my sister different casual games online. It's been very chill. The days seem to last forever without any structure or deadlines, and yet I never get anything much done — I have movies to watch which I can't seem to start, and books I'm not reading. I am forever at everyone else's disposal and sort of waiting on them to have time for me, so starting projects is difficult. When in doubt, I clean something.

It has not yet been a hilarity-filled holiday. I don't know if we're all less bantery than usual or just not being funny, but I'm less minded to write down everything my family says. Except for this year's inevitable running joke, which goes like this:

My sister Tara: Oh my gosh, she is eating a WHOLE BANANA again.

Me: Yup. Mmm-mmm, a whole banana. In your face, sucker.

Tara: Oh yeah? Well, same to you, you… banana… whole thing… eater… of… okay, I think I need to go work on that one.

AND LATER

Tara: Where are you going?

Me: To have the most fun ever, and you can't come.

Tara: Oh yeah? Well, I hope you don't… the most… ever… fun… have… not… okay, I'm going to go away and work on that one.

UNTIL

Me: So while we were in Seattle, we actually ran across a pie diner. Here's a picture. It's an Australian pie diner, but I think it still counts.

Tara: So clearly I win forever.

Me: Oh yeah? Well I hope you… uh… don't.

Tara: …yeaaaaaaaah. You get to go away and work on that one.