The Smoke Detector Is SensitiveA while back, I pointed out that making Indian flat breads with atta flour gave forth superior breads: more so, said breads were the right thing. That was two years or so ago. I have been making a lot of pizza lately, and I can somewhat sheepishly say now that the same rule applies, but with different flour. Using real duram wheat in the pizza dough makes a huge difference.
Sometimes, I am not that smart.
Anyway, this is simple: two parts flour, one part warm water, a bit each of yeast, salt, and oil. Add a bit more flour during kneading to get a soft dough, then let rise in a warm space for an hour or so. I have a rock in the oven, so I crank up the heat up to 425 here; in any case, a good hot oven is needed. Knead the dough again and let rest for 15 minutes, roll it out, top with a little sauce and a little cheese, then slide it onto the rock to sit for 9 minutes. This stuff is good stuff.
More: this is what it's supposed to be.
The flour accentuates this: the dough has flavor, chewy and tender, and the sauce and cheese settle into it to mingle. I am not yet good at turning out pizza that looks nice: I do not yet have that kind of control over the dough in the critical moment of getting it onto the peel, but that will come, in time. I might be tossing the stuff by the end of the winter. We shall see.
In the meantime, there is little better than hot bread for dinner. In the meantime, regardless of looks, it tastes fine.
TasksThere is much to do.
There is a makings of a breakfast to pre-prepare (done). There are books on the nightstand (some) and the remains of the paper (pen). I need to rotate the bed (bathtubs and bridge games), handle the trash (done again), and breathe fresh life into a machine (five).
I am doing few of these things, for Mr. Referent went and gave me a link to a webcomic. A very good webcomic. And now I'm reading all of it.
Dammit.
Joint TalksNow that I know what I am doing, I think that Moka Pot Coffee is becoming my favorite coffee.
This week past I have been in discussions with my knee.
"Look here," said my knee. "Something has gone amiss with me. I think it would do us both well if you took it easy with activities that require much of me."
It does not do to not heed the knee. Particularly when I've had to ask a little more from the other one. And those bastards tend to stick together.
The weather is running fingers down the panes again, attempting to slip into the house and abscond with the warminess. There are techniques for dealing with this; one of my favorites is the food of Eastern Europe. I cursed the lack of proper sound system in the kitchen and whomped up some haluski, sending the weather skittering back out into the dim of the evening.
I have lived here for a year and a half.
Last year around this time, I was sitting by a window and noticed a large amount of police activity up the hill on the main thoroughfare. I went out on the porch to see, and heard a band, playing in the distance. It was all quite confusing, but nothing compared to when they started lighting off the fireworks.
Turns out we have a yearly parade!
This year I was ready, complete with hot drink. I sat on the porch and watched the fireworks through the trees, then wandered down to the streets to see the parade roll by. I traded places with a young child who kept dropping candy down the storm drain, I clapped loud for the school bands, happy that the route was entirely downhill. I tipped my hat. It was grand.
Walking back up the hill I had to explain it all to a guy down the street who just moved in.
Drat.
Lacing hot rum with mace is not bad at all.
Last Night At 1am, Something Terrible Happened To YouAs a rule, I try to keep myself innocent of how to play bridge. There are plenty of other card games, after all, and I hold a very strong memory of an Aunt leaning down to whisper in my younger ear: "do not learn to play bridge. Someone always needs a forth, and you'll never do anything else with your life." I grasp enough of it to understand when magical things happen, like when through dint of luck and skill a player manages to put down all of their cards in perfect order, with drama in every trick, to the end of wildly implausible success. I have watched such games over such shoulders, and have been enthralled. But I do not know how to play bridge.
The lore of my family (and other families too, I suspect) is that luck comes to the partners who are sitting parallel to the bathtub. The lore says nothing about the case of multiple bathtubs in strange arrangement. I think it does say something about the general quality of orthogonality we find in our lives, and how we build things to live them in. Nevertheless. Bob and Alice were lucky tonight: them were sitting parallel to the bathtub.
I have been moving through the house these months, finding out what to do with the rooms. It is looking as if next up on the list is, at long last, what can laughably be called The Master Bedroom Suite. Truth be told, it might be better described as The Big Room With Not A Lot Of Stuff In It. I have some things that I can shuffle in to make it more welcome, and I have a much better idea of how it all should sit in there now. One of my options is to spin the bed a bit against the other bed wall, so as to better see the moon through the dark leafless branches on cool winter evenings.
I would also then be sleeping parallel to the bathtub.
TotingMr. Containment an I are having something of an argument by deed.
It began when we noticed that we would more often than not carry around as much stuff as we could; our laptop bags over flowing with papers, writing implements, various tools, laptops. Mr. Containment and I are both the sorts of souls who could be found idly picking up an emergency fishing tackle kit, and think that, yes, this would be something that should go in he bag. We are also the sorts of souls that would quite possibly, even in our odd urban environment, end up needing an emergency tackle kit. Mr. Containment would then be able to pull one out of his bag and had it over with nonchalance. I would have forgotten to pack it.
The argument, then, is to carry around less stuff. We've been testing several strategies toward this end, the most effective one so far being: use a smaller bag. Instead of something that can hold a laptop, a circus, and the actuarial department of a small Midwestern insurance firm, go with something into which only a few things fit. It gives cause to choose those things wisely. Using a smaller bag only magnifies this effect. Even as I type this line, I can hear some of you chanting: "Ha! Manpurse!" (which in itself is quite a nifty rhetorical trick!). Such things are somewhat less than useful, as most days my daily life requires something portable with a keyboard stuck to it, so I need a bag at least that big.
But not today.
Today was an unfettered day. I took advantage of the weather and my coat of several pockets, making very careful choices indeed in an effort to select the minimal amount of Stuff to get me through. I did well: no bag at all! The morning's walk though the wood was light and well-balanced, the evening's walk toward dinner (a plate of fries, with ketchup and company) was easy, even for the little bits of hill climbing involved. It was quite nice, to only have to lug around myself. I often rediscover this, and it has been pleasant each time.
As I wondered part way back with bits of the second set of company, I made ready to walk down through the valley an onward to home. Instead, it occurred to me in time to take the alternate route, up over the ridges and through the backways. This route was a bit longer, and a bit less flat, but: it is the season of lights. The houses were decked and framed in light, most white, some in other colors, some winking messages into the night. Occasionally, the lawns supported festive sculpture, well lit from without or within. Occasionally, a tree on the lawn traded in foliage of leaves for one of light. It was all quite pretty, and well worth it.
I took hidden stairs down hills, ambled under lamp posts hung with lit wreaths, and came home to hot tea. They tell us we will have worse weather, and this will make such trips tricky; we shall see.
It Remains That Neither Of Us Understand Happy HardcoreI know some folks that have little use for dance music. It is all on 4/4, they claim. There is very little dynamic range, they say. It is thump and bass and drum and beeping. They do not see the proposition in it. They are not wrong in any of these things.
Well, sort of.
I used to be able to passably play the piano. One of the things that came with the house is a serviceable but mildly detuned piano, an one of the first things I did here was pull out my collection of Joplin scores and put it in the piano bench. I should really get the piano tuned, but it's not so bad that I cannot recognize what I'm doing, and rebuilding the tactile habits isn't really affected by the dissonances. Like everything else, I need to pour more time into it.
Ragtime is interesting stuff. The right hand takes a syncopated stroll through melodies, dancing with sprains over keys strange. The left hand is the steady driver, darting is known pattern with quiet, solid insistence. The collision of these things is what makes the stuff so much fun.
The sort of dance music that I find myself enjoying is rife with this kind of stuff. It is less abashed than the right hand of ragtime, but bits and pieces dance and float against the unrelenting thump in the basement. All of the artists I admire use this well. It must be said that there is a lot of work out there that never ventures deeply into this territory, or even comes close to the terrain, shying away and staying on the beaten track of the horn stabs and progressions of sixes and whatnot. This is a shame. The genre is brash, but there is room for subtlety even in the sharp shadows, and it's fun to listen to the play that goes on in those spaces where depth can be hidden.
I am dusted with flour; soon, there will be calzones.
ReluxIt has been said to me by fellow transplants from the North East that, in the face of weather like this, people from where I came from don't have as much trouble driving as people do here. A large part of this is that, when faced with weather like this, people from where I came from don't. I sat and watched, and, as the snow thickened, so too did the traffic on the highway that snakes along the river. One of the truisms about driving around here is that tunnels make traffic: folks slow down for them (for reasons I've never understood). The snow, so my theory goes, turns the whole land into a tunnel, and instincts take over.
I drove out into it, anyway, being careful of foot and hands and mind, ever wary of the possibility of suddenly participating in an unpleasant physics experiment. I did this because friends have a tradition of burning down their house. Not exactly, really: the idea here is to resurrect past holidays by lighting (to an extent) a Christmas tree with candles, real candles. So we lit them, counting them as we went. We turned off the lights to watch, and then blew then out one by one, counting down. Mr. Referent was the ceremonial holder of the extinguisher who looked the most nervous; we did not burn the house down. There was cider, too. I came home by the most level route possible, which is something of a trick around here.
It is a peaceful night outside after all of that. It is quiet enough that the skittering rumble of the plows as they trace their courses are audible at distance. The winds have settled some, and no longer moan as they chase themselves around the houses. The roads are clear.
Slim DevicesI like the compact disc; I will be sorry to see it go. There is a fairly strong collegiate presence in the place where I live and work, and I stood one afternoon some time ago on the main student drag, eating a local hot dog and looking in wonder at all of the places where the record stores used to be. I wondered, too, just how much copyright violation was flying through the sky around me in the networks of copper and air. Most likely much.
There are other ways of getting the fix: there are the good folks at MagnaTune, who I like quite a bit (they sell CDs, too, it must be said), and BeatPort is threatening to become an expensive proposition. Podcasts trickle in and sit happy on the box above the stereo, and with some fiddling can be coaxed into spilling out into the room. I still like CDs, though. I cannot lend fiddly bits of data to friends in any way so simple (for many reasons, natch).
(Not getting them back is a separate problem, but it's an easy and useful loss.)
There is tea in the cup, and through the magic of modern technology that is the Internet, my brother is controlling my stereo from 300 miles away. Through the magic of an ancient technology that is my toaster, I have toast.
Bring on the night.
DriftsThere is snow here. Snow, glorious snow. They had nearly a foot of the stuff, an it has compressed down some, now. There has been enough time past since the fall for the walks to be clear, and reasonably dry. It is all quaint, almost uncomfortably so.
I no longer know the rhythms of this place; I have failed to find coffee.
Tomorrow.
How It GoesOn one hand, I find myself bereft of my walks. There is no shortage of walks to be had here, but the sort of thing that I'm missing are the comfortable routes which my feet know well. What I get instead are unfamiliar but still strangely reassuring routes that my feet used to know well, up the one-way street and back up around the top of the square and through the good coffee shop...except much has changed, and the distortions creep in. They are not malicious, just different.
I find I am missing things; I find I am missing the wooded paths. These sorts of situations end up becoming instructive. I should be able to see the trees again, for example.
In other ways, things are working out quite well. On one of the evening walks I passed a gentleman on the street; he nodded to me, and asked "how goes it?"
I stand a little straighter at that.
HearthThe geometries of the hearth are pleasing, more pleasing than mine; there is fire at my feet. The Morris chair in which I sit is wide and deep; it has no ottoman, but no matter, no matter. The glass at my hand is cradling Tokaji, a six, and it dances in the warm light. Everything does: one by one, all of the whiter lights have found ways to dim themselves as people pass.
The ghost would have loved this, of course. The ghost would not be a ghost, then-though: this is not the ghost's fault. The ghost is not responsible. Basta.
We are lit by nothing but the hearth and the tree, and it is time to see about the glasses again.
Merry Christmas.
Flinging LootIt used to be that nicest thing about the holiday with the tree was receiving gifts; the world has turned a bit, now, and I can say (most likely again, and still) that these days by far the better deal is giving them. There is always an element of toe-tapping sweat to this, silly as it is: questions linger as to the use and fitness of the surprises one selects for those one cares about. I am pleased to report that this year was a smashing success all around in both directions.
The rule of the Stuff Violation goes something like this: if the house is full, don't bring in any more stuff. This made things a little difficult with regard for our parents, who have been busy trying to pare down the merry clamor of things in their home for quite some time now, further exacerbated by the new kitchen, where (and I do not disrecommend this) for the first time in a long time order was able to descend and everything had a proper place. The issue here is that, with a place for everything and everything in its place, new things tend to upset the nutmeg cart a bit.
That said, after the fact of sitting by the tree and carefully collecting colorful paper, my brother and I went in on a cheese grater for them. Aaron Sorkin reference aside (which I do not think anyone else caught) this was a wild success. It is not that they do not have cheese graters: they do. It is good, though, to have good tools, and now in one small corner of a drawer they have a better tool than they had, and in kitchens little things like this can make for big differences. Now something else has to leave the kitchen to make room for it, but that's alright: there is an obvious candidate.
For myself, I now have a worked piece of brass and iron that does a commendable job of making things flat in ways that I was not quite able to make things flat before. It is good to have good tools.
All content under copyright by the author. Dancing is permitted. The strange deltic glyphs in the sand under tidal flow are a pleasure to watch in their deepening. Offer not valid in Kansas. We put it down and then we lost it. It all happens in the corner of the eye. Mail accepted for the bears in the basement. We have a dog, but we do not own it. Thank you.