JanerBlog

Steamy Photoshoot

2008-07-03T02:22:17Z

Who wants to see me and Carla in a steampunk photoshoot? You know you do. Huge thanks to Jennie Breeden for remembering her camera after I totally forgot mine. You rock, Jennie.

burble burble little jam

2008-06-19T03:10:31Z

I've three half-pints of serviceberry-mulberry jam burbling away on the back of the stove. It's going to be lovely, lovely jam -- it came right together with very little sugar and no pectin at all. I added a splash of balsamic vinegar because I wasn't happy with its acidity level, and it turned out to be the perfect touch, adding just a little bit of tartness where there was only sweet before, and rounding out some nice taste notes in the middle. I cooked it in my big enameled pot, which had the syrup reduced in a flash and cleaned up like a dream. Trivia, though the Canadians among you will probably shake your heads at my ignorance: These berries -- among their many names, including "shadbush" and "Juneberry" -- are also known as "Saskatoons", from the Cree word misâskwatômina (/misaaskwatoomina/). The city in Saskatchewan takes its name from the bush. And now you know.

Phooey on fungus.

2008-06-18T04:31:47Z

I had a really nice crop of strawberries coming in this year -- a bumper crop, even, despite the tiny space -- and I've now lost over half of them to this awful fungus called Leather Rot. It's particularly nasty because the majority of berries go straight from green to rotten, and those ripe berries that develop the rot have to be chucked entirely because even when you cut away the bad bits the healthy remainder tastes gross. So I picked and tossed out over a quart of berries, and picked several others half-ripe because it's better to have half an almost-ripe berry than no berry at all. Bummer. On the other hand, the park across the street has a lovely serviceberry bush, and the fruit is ripe and sweet, with seeds that taste of amaretto. So tomorrow I'm going to harvest the park and make jam. Maybe with some rhubarb to give it a little tart kick.

Things that have made me happy lately

2008-06-15T23:18:04Z

The last week or so has been full of many happy moments (well, past the events of last Monday, anyway), most of which are too small to merit their own blog post, but are worth mentioning:

Having a hilarity-filled lunch with co-workers
Struggling with, and finally emerging victorious against technology
Riding my bike hard to relieve tension after winning against technology
Riding my bike home through a gorgeous, moonlit, skin-temperature city night that smelled beautifully of damp earth, barbecue, and pot smoke
Seeing Obama finally get the nod
Watching my tomato plants explode
Eating my garden's first peas, strawberries and cherries
Finally having some time to get caught up on Clockwork Game
Getting caught up on obligations to friends and husband
Playing a wonderful concert with Whiskey at the art fair
Going to a great party with all the Dahlias and liking each of them even more than before
Having another fantastic dinner at Food Dance
Being reminded that Paul is the Best Husband Ever, in countless ways

Yup, life is good.

TMI!

2008-06-09T19:23:23Z

Hey everybody. I had a Highly Embarrassing Medical Procedure performed on me this morning. If you're not up to reading about it, or have a conservative workplace, you're probably not going to want to read any further. HOw embarrassing? So much so that my mom asked me not to blog about it. Tough noogies, mom. This is what the internets are for. I'll give the more squeamish among you some whitespace so you can click away now.

Okay, still here? Good. Today I had a colonoscopy! I got to go through this lovely experience because my family has a pretty bad history of colon cancer, and it's starting to get to be that time in my life where early tests make all the difference for a happy life later on. Like most of the commiseration reports I'd read, the previous day's "cleanout" was by far the worst part of the procedure. All day Sunday I got nothing solid to eat, and subsisted on Knox gelatin made with apple juice, ginger ale, iced tea and chicken broth drunk straight from the can. O dignity! I remember you! The first round of overnight laxatives was so harsh that I had to check the bowl to make sure I hadn't shat out something important. Like my pancreas. In fact, just about the only thing that kept me willing to continue the process was thinking about all the high-larious things I would be blogging about after it was all over. Like, "Hey, so *that's* where my car keys went!" and "Lookit that -- the penny I swallowed when I was six!" and "I guess my friends can't say I'm full of shit anymore!" Yipes. And that was only the first round. The second and third consisted of this horriffic stuff called Phospho soda, which works by drawing water from all over your body and forcing it into your colon. The result is that you basically get a rear-action firehose for ten hours straight, and never get to be away from the bathroom for more than a half-hour at a time. Fun for the whole family! Actually, based on some other accounts, I got off easy; I only had to drink two 6-oz glasses of the stuff. There's an alternative that requires drinking a gallon of salty electrolyte fluid to achieve the same result. Either way, this morning I was gut-bustingly, nightmarishly, squeaky clean. We arrived at 6:45 am (early appointment == no fasting on the second day) and I specifically requested the Really Good Drugs. They offer to let you stay awake through the procedure and watch your innards on a little color screen, but I decided early on (in an extreme reversal from my usual how-things-work nerdery) that I wanted to be good and stoned. To quote Carla, until they add a little animated gnome in goggles and a hazmat suit, I'd prefer to avoid the show. Adding to today's fun was the fact that I have never been admitted to a hospital before, and I was more than a little anxious about the whole thing. So I get the awful stupid robe, the nurses finally get my IV started, and then they give me some nice heated blankies to help me relax, which was actually a pretty nice touch. They wheel me in, and I meet the staff that's going to be taking care of me, and then they start the Really Good Drugs through my IV. It was really weird: I was focusing on all the stuff I could see from there on my side, and thinking to myself, hey, I don't feel this taking effect. I opened my mouth, and as I was getting ready to tell them that I needed more sedation, they announced that I was all done and ready to go into the recovery area. Over just like that. YAY DRUGS. The extra good news is that they found nothing of consequence, and I don't have to have this wonderful procedure done again for another ten years! The bad news is that Jimmy Hoffa is still missing.

Where the heck have I been?!

2008-06-07T17:31:08Z

Sorry I haven't posted in a couple of weeks, but there's been a reason for the quiet -- I've got a new job! I didn't want to post anything until I knew for sure that I had it locked down, and even then I was afraid to say anything until I'd received a formal offer letter and submitted my letter of resignation to my former employer. But! Everything is squared away now, so I can finally talk about it with people other than Paul. It's a really great company, with all sorts of wonderful benefits (including being able to bike to work forever and ever!) and all the people I know who work there are crazy smart and super cool. It's going to be a tough job and a ton of work but I'm really looking forward to the challenge and am eager to get back into web design. I didn't realize how much I missed it until I was away for so long. So! I start on June 30th -- which is a nice coincidence as it marks the one-year anniversary of my layoff from my job at CareerSite. Hooray!

We lost a great one yesterday.

2008-05-20T21:47:54Z

Rory Root, consummate comics retailer, has passed away at the age of 50. I knew him from theWEF, met him twice in person at APE, and though I didn't know him well enough to eulogize him the way many others have, I was very taken by his shy, gentle, self-effacing nature, and how he countered that with his pleasant conversation and willingness to share his boundless knowledge with anyone, be it on line or at a convention. He was also one of the very first to give Vögelein a chance. We'll miss you, Rory. For your kind self, your beautiful store, and your positive comics evangelism.

Neilsy

2008-05-13T16:15:28Z

You know, the next time somebody tells me that I might be overdoing it a bit in my ardent appreciation of Mr. Scary-Trousers Gaiman, before I sic the obligatory pack of squeeing gothgirls on them, I'm going to sit them down with this short little video:

Must be the Sidhe...

2008-05-13T01:23:48Z

Paul and I have been watching our way through all three seasons of Father Ted, and it's predictably thrown me into a fit of nostalgia for the trip I took to Ireland in the mid-1990's. So I went to Google Maps, and found the boat that appears in the opening credits, and I thought, well heck, Inis Oírr is just a click away from Sligo, so I'll see what the terrain looks like from the satellites. Turns out that all the major landmarks in Sligo (Carrowmore, Carrowkeel, Knocknarea, Ben Bulben, Glen Alt) are all invisible to Google Maps. This is as close as you can get to Maeve's Cairn. Seriously, you can get a closer look at Mount Weather than you can at Glen Alt. Weird. Must be the Sidhe hexing the satellites.

In defense of Kalamazoo Restaurants

2008-05-11T15:06:41Z

I am a fortunate woman. It was my birthday last week, and as such, I've had the rather wonderful opportunity to eat out at several really great restaurants to celebrate: Food Dance Cafe, Sushiya, (both in Kalamazoo) and Zingerman's Roadhouse (in Ann Arbor, of course). I would have to say that, empirically, my least favorite meal was actually at Zingerman's. All of us Irwins love to eat, and love to eat well, but none of us are what you'd exactly call foodies. However, we do have some of the best culinary training available: My mom's (and my Gram Lucy's, and Great-Aunt Norma's, and to a certain extent, my Gram Irwin's) home cooking. It's easy to snipe at normal restaurant food when you have a long line of Strong Women Who Cook Well in your family. It being a Saturday night, we called ahead and made reservations for three persons: myself, my mom, and my brother Jim. So we arrive at 7:15 for our reservation, and not only is our table not ready, but it's so busy that there's nowhere to sit, inside or out. Mom's been on her feet for ten hours straight and her feet are about to give out, so I ask the hostess for a chair for her -- and only then did the flock of twentysomething girls occupying one of the metal gliders out front realize what was afoot and make way for mom to sit down. So we wait, and we wait. I think we finally got seated at 7:45. We sit down, and they're out of menus, so Jim and I have to share. We get our water poured by one of the owners. Our server, who's trying his damndest to keep up Zingerman's legendary customer service, has obviously either had a rough day or a recent ass-chewing or both, because what would have seemed like charming banter if he'd been having a good evening came across as forced jocularity instead. We order. I get a single raw oyster (I only wanted a taste, not a whole appetizer), and it was wonderful. The hot sauce tasted exactly like a perfectly-made Bloody Mary, and may have been my favorite taste of the evening. It was also topped with freshly-grated horseradish that I'm pretty sure was in whole-root form five minutes before it became a garnish. Mom gets the famous Zingerman's Mac-and-cheese, which is legendary amongst the foodie crowd, and is also a perfect gauge, because mom's mac-and-cheese is also legendary at our house. Jim gets the deep-fried catfish and hush puppies. I get the crab cakes. We split some onion rings and devour the breadbasket; I may carp on Zingerman's entrees, but their bread still deserves every laurel thrown at it. None of our entrees came with salad, and only mom felt like paying for one, so Jim and I skipped that course entirely. So the entrees arrive. Mom's mac-and-cheese is only so-so, and she proclaims it not as good as hers. I taste it, and immediately agree. We also agree that it's five bucks overpriced, fancy cheddar or not. Jim's catfish is whole, tail-on -- something we missed, though it was clearly printed on the menu -- and instead of being able to eat great satisfying gobbets of tasty fried fish, I was forced to flake it off the bones for him into a distasteful little pile of breading and fish, with plenty bones still in. He ate almost none of it, and paid $21 for the privilege. My crabcakes were tasty, and I probably the best I'd ever had -- but considering most of the crabcakes I've eaten have been pretty lousy, that's not saying much. The three cakes arrived prettily plated, each about 2.5 inches in diameter, dressed with a bland but citrusy sauce and accompanied by an icecream-scoop of (delicious and organic and well-prepared but nonetheless plain) white rice, and some nicely-wilted but otherwise unexciting spinach greens that I could (and have) easily prepare by myself at home. When I go out to a restaurant, I specifically order food that would be too difficult or expensive or time-consuming to make on my own, and so this was a definite disappointment, especially for $21. And to add insult to injury, even after plowing through a shared appetizer and two baskets of bread, I was able to polish off my entree in its entirety. No doggy bags for me. We all left feeling disappointed, underfed and overcharged, especially after waiting an extra half-hour past our reservation time. None of us feel any compunction about dropping $30 apiece on a meal, provided that we all leave feeling satisfied, but this was definitely not that kind of a meal. We didn't even get salad or drinks for that kind of money. Ridiculous, and the wait and effort was totally not worth the Zingerman's brand name. By comparison, my meal with Paul at Food Dance was absolutely lovely, beautifully crafted and made primarily of local food; all the meat, eggs and greens are raised within a hundred miles of the restaurant. I had three delicious pulled-pork soft tacos with house-made citrus farm cheese, a heavenly guacamole sauce, toe-curling jicama slaw and a pot of creamy local black beans for four dollars less than my Zingerman's entree, and had enough food left over for a full lunch the next day. Salad was also separate at Food Dance, but the Square Dance was incredible enough to justify its $8 price tag, and Paul and I essentially split it because every separate taste-pairing (warm goat cheese and tart cherry! caramelized onion and pine nut!) was an explosion of flavor that needed to be considered in its own mouthful. Actually, *all* of Food Dance's entrees are like that (ask me sometime about their goat-cheese-stuffed, deep-fried squashblossoms... glaaaghhh); carefully sculpted flavors that pair perfectly with everything else on the plate so that you almost don't dare distract yourself from the taste combinations by talking to your dinnermates. This is food worth its price tag, and no waiting at all. We walked right in, sat right down, and ate ourselves stupid. So yeah. For the same money, come to Kalamazoo and eat better. Sometimes the brand name isn't worth it.

Who knew?

2008-05-09T19:50:56Z

Miyazaki was right all along: the Plot of Nausicaa is coming true...

Some Videos that Made Me Happy.

2008-04-30T02:25:26Z

All work safe, though both of them made me cry. I love the whole world, boomdeyada, boomdeyada. Thirteen-year-old sings Pie Jesu and breaks your heart.

I have heard the shoggoths singing, each to each

2008-04-28T22:10:08Z

The white noise in the background is the hamburger frying for tonight's chili, but if you listen closely, you can actually hear the finished shoggoths singing to each other. Also, my mom emailed me this morning to inform me that my great-great uncle's name was actually "Ormel", not "Olmer". Yay, dxsleysia! But seriously, folks. The shoggoth is already named, so he'll still be Olmer. Though maybe he should be Olmer Ormel.

For Sale:

2008-04-27T03:50:55Z

One G4 tower, for parts. Motherboard probably fried. Chassis is in good shape. $100. Comes with: * Static bag full of old PC-133 RAM which may or may not work * One functional 40-G hard drive (original factory) that works, and one 40-G hard drive that may or may not work (still working on resurrecting it but I'm also not the l337est hardware expert) * Functional CD-ROM drive * Functional Fan * Functional Airport Card One 15-inch Apple Flatscreen Monitor. $100. Email me if anyone here's interested; otherwise it'll probably go on Craigslist next.

I'm So Proud of My Pottery Mama

2008-04-26T03:21:15Z