Phrase of the Moment:
¤ Phrase: "Did you hear something?"
¤ Usage: *cats crash through the room engaged in noisy mortal combat*
Flux: "Did you hear something?"
Malaya: "Nope."
¤ Synonyms: N/A
¤ Notes: This one is a little game Malaya and I play where in one of the cats makes a loud or pathetic noise, and I ask if she heard it, and she says no.  Dusty used to be the cause of this, with his frequently yowling or noisy/clumsy TV-mounting attempts, but now that we have two cats who frequently chase each other around and make a lot of noise doing it, the saying is more all purpose.

Over the months it's become ritualized to the point that any time we hear any loud, interrupting noise, at home or elsewhere, I can say, "Did you..." and she'll immediately reply, "Nope." -- January 14, 2004

Man I keep meaning to talk about that book/series. It's been in the "books lying open" section with a line through it for about 2 months at this point.

Here's some random personal and site stuff, then some news and running discussion below.

¤ Email is making me unhappy lately.  I'm still getting something like 400 virus mails a day, most of them Mydoom, and on top of that the actual email has been very sparse, both on this site and on the D2 site.  No one loves me anymore.  And the lack of real email wouldn't be so annoying if not for the fact that I spend a few minutes, several times a day, sorting through the 200 mails that have come in over the past 4 or 6 hours, only to find that 2 or 1 or none of them were actual mails that I wanted to read.

It's at times like this that I think I should put comments on the site, just to see some feedback from people who liked/loved/hated/were bored by something or other that I wrote about.  And then I think that if I did that, I'd never get any real emails about anything.  And then I remember, "What emails?"

The biggest problem I see with comments, besides the fact that I'd have to arse with a script to get them to work and work in a format and layout and design I wanted them to work in, is that I'd then have to read over them regularly to keep out any flame wars or porn spam or other such shit, bother with banning repeat spammer IP#'s, etc.  But mostly, it's that my site format doesn't lend itself very well to comments.

They work fine on a blog, where each post is a paragraph or three on a single topic.  Here I write a paragraph or 27 on all sorts of things, all in the same post, and if there were a single comment box after all of this, the dialogue would be hopelessly scattered, assuming here was actually any dialogue at all.  One person talking about the quote of the day, another about the curse of the day, another about the news item on how eating beef will probably kill you, another on some personal comment I made, and so on.

The alternative is to have a bunch of different comments threads/boxes on the same post, but that seems even cheesier.  Do I do one for all of the news items or for each one?  Do I move comments around if someone clicks the wrong box and posts on the wrong thread?  Plus my admin and "is anyone here" worries are just multiplied by this style.

The other option is to change this site around in some way to be a regular blog type thing, but I don't much like that since I enjoy the sidebar and QotD stuff how they are, changing every day, and I don't much write in normal blog style.  The news items would work fine, but the longer personal discussion things would be odd, the photos would stretch on and on, and I tend to do this whole blog thing in an hour or three at one time, just before I post it.  And I like that; if I had an actual blog I'd probably spend twice as much time working on it, since I'd want to put in regular comments and updates all the time, to keep return visitors entertained.

I could, in theory, write it just as I do now, put one post a day for the qotd and sidebar stuff, and then parse the other stuff out into individual posts every few hours the next day. But that seems scattered, disjointed, and I know I'd still end up posting more things with less commentary per thing, no matter how I tried not to.

Anyway, if anyone has any comments on comments, pro or con, feel free.

¤ So are you hungry?  I mean really hungry?  For I have perfected the ultimate burrito.  I just need bigger tortillas to show it off it.

The recipe is simple.  Malaya and I have long enjoyed plain burritos, which are a flour tortilla with refried beans and some chopped veggies on them.  It's a dish I brought up here with me, and I hesitate to call it a "recipe" since it's a bit too simple for that.  The customizations I make are to make very special refried beans, which are made in a large glass pyrex dish, like you'd bake cornbread in. Into that I empty a large can of vegetarian refried beans, a can of organic black beans (whole and drained), a good couple of splashes of spicy salsa, several ounces of chopped sharp cheddar cheese, about half a minced white onion, and spices.  Spices may include crushed red pepper flakes, chili powder, or more ideally minced jalapenos and/or death chilis.  I don't know exactly what death chilis are, but they sell them in the ethnic foods aisle at the supermarket, and they're like those long, gnarly pepper things things you fish out of your Chinese food, since you know that if you actually bite one your tongue will probably melt away like a spatula handle dropped on a stove burner. I take about 20 or those and cut them in two, and throw them in.  Malaya and I like it hot.

That whole pan of beans 'n stuff is nuked for about 10 minutes on high (stop to stir once) or else baked in the oven on 350 for a while, if we've got more time.  The whole point in heating is to get it mostly liquefied, so you can stir it all together into a nice muddy consistency.  And of course since it's better heated when you eat it.

The basic burrito uses a few scoops of that, spread over half a flour tortilla, with some squares of jalapeno jack cheese, and you fold that over and stick it into the toaster oven for a couple of minutes; long enough to melt the cheese, warm the beans (if they need further warming) and crisp the tortilla.  You can eat the whole thing or any part of it cold... it just doesn't taste as good.

Once that comes out we put chopped veggies on it.  These may include any or all of the following, in order of necessity: chopped purple onions, tomatoes, salsa, shredded lettuce, chopped bell peppers (any color), dabs of sour cream, black olives, green olives (watch the salmonella), or any other cold vegetables you enjoy on Mexican food.  I'm partial to cucumbers as well, on occasion, though I can be happy with just tomatoes and black olives, if need be.

These are usually eaten like a soft taco, I.E. folded over, rather than rolled up surgically, like the ones you get from restaurants (I can never find good, thin, flexible flour tortillas for that).  Leave a bit of a space at one end so you can pinch that side shut and not have too much smoosh out at the end you aren't eating first.

The new innovation to this classic meal is... taquitos. And then shrimp.

For a few weeks, since I had some at mom's over Xmas, we've been getting chicken taquitos.  These are also called rolled tacos, and are basically that; hard corn tortillas rolled over some cheese and meat (chicken, beef, whatever) and then allowed to harden so they are crunchy to eat. You can just nuke them for a quick soggy snack, or oven cook them, or nuke them and then toaster oven them, if you want them done faster. We tried various methods to eat these with vegetables, but the essential problem is that you're trying to eat something small and round, and that any ingredients you add are likely to fall off.

Smearing them with sour cream first, or eating two at once side by side worked a little, but the last couple of times we had them I just put four side by side, like a log raft, and ate them and the sprinkled vegetables (same as the ones listed above) all at once, with a fork.

The new innovation is copied from a Rubio's fish taco, which is just a flour tortilla with two or three strips of fried, battered fish, shredded cabbage, and white sauce.  To which I always add some spicy salsa, and ideally some tomato and black olive and sour cream, if I get them to go. (Which is no longer possible now that I live in the Bay Area, since the nearest Rubio's is in Emeryville, which is about a 15 minute drive with no traffic.  And there's always traffic.  Flour tortillas that are older than 20 minutes make me unhappy.)

What makes the very simple Rubio's fish tacos so good is the crunchy, hot fish in the middle, so it finally occurred to me that I could just put a couple of taquitos into the middle of my normal burritos (which are actually more like big soft tacos), subtract about 25% of the normal ingredients for space considerations (or don't and slop over a lot), and eat that.  And I did, and they were glorious.

The later innovation, made for the first time Thursday night, was to add a handful of frozen cooked cocktail style shrimp in with the rest.  And that made it even better, though every one of them I've made since has been alarmingly larger than the tortilla could hold.  We're buying a larger size of tortilla next time.

The overall meal from these is awesome, and very filling.  It's also a calorie train wreck, but you're lucky to eat two of these, so the total is probably no more than 600 or 700 calories, if you go easy on the cheese and sour cream.

The other problem is that they're hard to fix. Not that anything in it is physically difficult to prepare; it's not a souffle, FFS, it's just that there are a lot of separate ingredients, and you need to prepare them separately and only mix them together in the final product (and in your tummy).  So you've got to have warmed shrimp in a bowl, hot refried bean mix, chopped cheese, and the microwaved, warm, but not yet crisped taquitos all ready at once, to put together into the toaster oven.  I put the taquitos sort of on the side of the rest, since the rest doesn't get properly warm and the taquitos don't get properly crispy if they're lying on the wet refried beans+ in the first place.

And yes, I'm fastidious about my food preparation, when I want a particular taste.  You should see me dress up a frozen cheese pizza.

Then the moment it comes out of the toaster oven, you need to have all of the veggies ready to slap on it, cover with some sour cream, and chow down.  I've found that a Pepsi goes very well with them, though I of course think that Pepsi goes very well with pretty much everything, especially love handles, zits, and hyperactivity.

All I had to eat on Thursday was this dish.  I got up around noon, snacked a bit but didn't have any breakfast, then made three of them and ate them over the course of about an hour and a half, and was so bloated and satisfied by that that I never ate again, until I went to bed feeling slightly hungry, about 10 hours later.

Friday (today, as I think of these things, since even though it's Saturday morning at 3am, I've not gone to bed yet) I had just some toast for breakfast, then had two of those several hours later, and here it is, 8 hours later, and I've eaten nothing else all day except for a package of Ramen noodles.  And a Rice Krispies treat.  They're like a wonder diet food; you become content with one meal a day!

Of course it's a gigantic meal that takes 30 minutes to prepare, requires about 20 separate ingredients, and has more calories than many people on earth eat in an entire Superbowl weekend, but that's really not the point I'm trying to make here.

And yes, writing this has made me desperately want another one.  Now.

Fortunately I have these low calorie peanut M&Ms to stave off the cravings for actual food.

I'd describe the cartoon, but it's only about 30 seconds long, and it's so cute and catchy and absurd that no written description could hope to do it justice.  Just go watch it, and find yourself halfway through it all over again, with the loop, before you realize it. And decide that you just might as well watch it all again, to try and read the fine print about Norway.

¤ Speaking of catchy cartoons, here are a couple that I meant to post yesterday, after the latest "You're not really still eating beef, are you?" news item

• Mad Cow, courtesy of Totally Tom.  It's funny and insulting and has nothing to do with the beef industry.
• The Meatrix, is a PETA styled "where your food really comes from" type cartoon inspired by the Matrix.  It's a lot better than you expect.  And you pretty much have to chuckle at "Moopheus" don't you?

¤ If you're in Pittsburgh and you're black and you see a police dog in the area, you might want to arm yourself.

A police dog cleared two years ago for attacking a child has been suspended indefinitely for biting a teenager during a crime prevention demonstration at a middle school.

The parents of the teen, Angela Kirkland, said a K-9 officer had to pry the dog’s jaws apart to free their daughter. The girl got marks on her skin, which wasn’t punctured, when Dolpho bit at her pants and shirt during a demonstration of the dog’s drug-sniffing abilities, her parents said.

The Kirklands said a white student petted the dog without incident before Dolpho attacked their daughter, who was next in line.

It was the second time in 19 months the dog has been accused of attacking a black child.

Recreational running, I mean.  If you're looking for advice on what to do if you're black and in Pittsburgh and see a K9 unit coming, this isn't exactly the best spot to look for advice.

I've been jogging about once every other week for a while, but I'm trying to move it up to a more regular schedule. I have gone three Saturdays in a row, though I'm unlikely to go today, since I went Thursday, just two days ago, and I'm still sorta sore in places.  My back, mostly, though that became sore in the after run stretching, oddly enough.

The biggest challenge in running here is that I don't like running on pavement, it rains a lot here, and in news that I was not aware of back when I lived in San Diego, water from the sky + not pavement = mud.  Three out of the last four times I've gone running I've been trampling through mud puddles, and while that's not the end of the world, it does affect my pace some when I have to slow down to avoid slipping and falling on hills.  It's also disturbingly tiring to run with a bunch of tacky mud stuck to the bottom of your shoes. You wouldn't think you'd notice it, I mean I weigh 170 or something, and probably 30-40 pounds of that is in each of my legs.  So what's another 1 pound (if that) of mud on the bottom of both feet?

And yet when I'm running and it's very gluey and stuck on there, it feels like my shoes are made of metal.  Heavy metal! I don't mean like aluminum or titanium or zinc or something.  I'm talking lead. Or at least copper.

Anyway, the following was written mostly last weekend, and bumped from being posted all week due to more pressing blogging.  But don't let that slow you down.

Saturday I got my lazy ass out and did my usual 5.5 (or so ) mile jog around the upper rim of the Lafayette Reservoir.  It's a lovely course, winding in a long circle across the tops of various hills and valleys that surround the mostly man-made lake, and descending to the lower level just once, for about 1/4 mile at the parking lot/concrete reservoir area, where all of the huge flocks of noobs walk on the paved and mostly flat walking path. The whole rest of the way you're mostly on your own, atop the hill hills, passing someone heading the other way every 10 or 15 minutes, and enjoying the views of the lake and the roofs of houses on the other side of the hill.  I recommend it.

At first, months ago, I'd run/jog in spurts, until my legs started to go wobbily, or more often, my heart would feel like it was going to burst or I couldn't get enough air to keep going, or else I'd get a blinding side cramp.  At that point I'd have to go to a walk, uphill, downhill, or on the flat, until I recovered enough to run some more.  Over time I've gotten better at it thought, more in shape (legs at least, I'm not thinner than I was last summer, just more fit) and able to run longer, or at least smarter.  A lot of it is just learning to pace myself, how long my strides should be for the incline or decline I'm traveling over, how to breath and not get a side cramp, etc.

I always walked a lot with my old stadium job, and usually covered 5 or more miles a night, mostly up and down steps. I just never ran for more than a minute at a time, and seldom even for that long, and never very fast. So my legs were very strong, and I didn't get tired when I was in good shape (preserved by mountain biking in the off season or when the team was on the road for 10 or 12 or 14 days at a time), but I didn't have much endurance, though I wasn't running then to put that to the test.  I never considered running back then, since I had to do it at work, but mostly since I much preferred biking, and there were tons of great trails and dry weather in San Diego, year round.  Also, my knees, ankles, feet, hips, shins, etc, were pretty much constantly in pain (not all at once, but always something) due to all of the pounding they took on the hard concrete at work.  It often hurt just to walk, both at work and elsewhere, so it would have been rather foolish to go out jogging at that point.  Bike riding was work on my knees, but it's no impact, and is great at building strong leg muscles. Plus it's fun, you get to cover distance, see sights, roll down steep hills, etc.

Up here, as I've blogged about in the past (which is my little way of saying that I'm not going to go into it in detail here) bike riding has lacked.  Nowhere real near to do it on good trails, narrow country roads where we live, Malaya not used to biking or much wanting to do it over distances, etc. Hence I've turned to jogging, something I'd never done in my life other than during PE in high school, and had always thought I'd hate. Surprisingly enough, I don't hate it, and actually find it pretty enjoyable when I'm going well.

One thing I do find in common with my bike riding and jogging is that I hate to do either of them on the pavement or on city streets. Biking it was just a matter of choice, as well as being worried about some drunk or nut taking me out with a car.  It smells, it's noisy, you have to avoid parked cars and moving ones, and you have to ride forever to get a good workout since the bike rolls so easily. When jogging, the concern with being hit isn't there, and jogging is so much more work and so much more tiring than riding that the distance/time required for a work out isn't a problem.  It's mostly the noisy and smelly cars that bother me, other people in the way, cars pulling out of driveways to avoid, traffic lights slowing me down, etc.  And there's the added problem of running on such a hard surface hurting my feet.  Asphalt is softer than concrete sidewalks, but there you're half out in the street, and you've got to consider the whole, "killed by a car" issue again.

Which is why I like the reservoir rim trial so much, since it's away from cars, hard pavement, noise, all bikes, and most people. The problem with it, for a neophyte jogger such as myself, is the terrain. There are hills, and more hills.

Only a few are long (the worst being Widow Maker, which is about half a mile long, winding, and encountered just after you start back up the dirt path past the parking area, if you're heading counterclockwise, which is the way I generally go) but lots of them are very steep.  A few you literally can't climb if it's muddy; you'd just slip and slide, or so I imagine, and the long skidding footprints tell me.

I start about halfway around, where a city street comes near the trail and allows me to park somewhere other than the crowded, parking meter enforced lot, and if I go left from there (clockwise) I'm immediately faced with the steepest hill of the entire circuit.  And I mean steep; there's no way you could ride a bike up it, and I'm not entirely sure you could push one up it, unless you had good traction.  It's like ski lift steep. It's not a good start to a run, since there's no way on earth to run up it, and even walking you reach the top winded and leg sore, unless you go very slowly.

So I start off the other way, and that's a great start since it's mostly downhill, as the rim trail slopes around towards the parking lot, which is probably about 1.5-2 miles away.  The last time out, Saturday, was my best run ever, and I made it across the parking lot and started up Widowmaker in 16 minutes, and only had to slow to a walk twice, on two hills that are short, but so steep that the pace I have to drop to in order to keep "jogging" up them is more like a high-stepping walk, and is actually slower than I go if I just bend at the waist and put my hands on my knees and walk up it as fast as I can manage. But other than that, I run all the way, faster on flat and downhill, slower uphill, trying to keep my respiration and legs about equally stressed, for the best work out.

Two miles in 16 minutes is an eight minute mile, and that's not exactly world class.  However I'm totally estimating the distance from where I start to the parking lot, there are a lot of hills, and I've only been jogging for about 4 months, and very irregularly over that time. The whole thing takes me a little over an hour, and that's all running with some fast walking, on the hills.

In fact, I don't even know how long the entire thing is. I've seen the distance listed anywhere from 5-6.5 miles on various websites and maps.  I suppose the variance is due to the numerous side trails and turn offs, plus whether or not they include the whole circle, or don't count the 1/4 to 1/2 miles of paved parking lot.  The most detailed description of the hike, as well as numerous rather ugly photos taken during the harsh sunlight of a late summer hike (hence the brown and yellow of everything; it's currently muddy and very green) can be found on the Bay Area Hiker website.  They list the distance as 4.69 miles, but they take the inner trial a little bit on each end, which is a lot shorter, and they only count the part they're on the dirt.

So anyway, it's 5-6 miles, and the hills are crippling, as even the BA Hiker site admits. My best time is just about 55 minutes, and that's walking most of the 2nd half. I suppose a 9 or 10 minute mile isn't bad, considering the terrain and my noob jogger nature, but I'd like to get the whole thing down to 40 or 45 minutes.

This is why I can't play games that don't keep score.  I have to compete against something, even if it's just against myself.  My biggest bursts of speed and running ability on the trial come when I sight people in the distance, especially if they're going the same way as me.  I must pass them, and on the run.  I just must. Unless they're faster or have more endurance than me, in which case I want to trip them into the mud, cut their throats, and have sex with their hot, sweat-filled running shoes.

Well, not really.

At least not the shoes part.

Speaking of shoes, mine are doing very nicely.  They were an Xmas gift at an after Xmas sale in San Diego, they're Asics Gel Koji running shoes, and I've yet to have any sore feet problems at all, even after my few runs on pavement.  I've had some sore hips, and my leg muscles get very tired, but the feet are golden.  The shoes flare out at the sole for a wider impact zone, have gel and cushion padding, a half inch cut out below the heel so the impact is spread to the sides of the feet, and so on.  But no, I don't have their suggested "companion" $12 multicolored running socks.  In fact the only reason I have these $110 shoes is that they were on close out after Xmas and dad got them for just $35.

When I was young and (more) foolish I refused to pay more than about $20 for sneakers, figuring they were all the same.

A job at the stadium that required endless running up and down steps and several years of constantly sore feet, shins, knees, ankles, hips, etc, later, I started to come around to the benefits of better shoes, and the last few years I spent $80 or $90 on good, Air Nikes with gel inserts and shoe orthopedics and all that happy shit, and most of my sore feet issues went away.

I'm not good at spending money on anything I don't entirely need to survive, but if I need to get something, and I'm going to use it constantly, and I'm going to regret it forever if I skimp and get a pretty good one when a good or great one wouldn't have been that much more money, I'm trying to get myself to just buy the better quality one and be happy with it.  This mostly goes for things I use a lot, such as shoes, or computer monitor, or keyboard, or mouse, or sunglasses, or whatever.  Things where you could easily get by with cheap, and where the more expensive seems like a needless luxury, but that you'll really appreciate over time.

Ironically, I've been really good at using this reasoning as an argument for years, way back in the days before I was the one doing the buying. It's just taken longer to start working on me than it did to work on my parents.  I still have the leather book bag that I talked my dad into getting me for $100 back in the early 90's, rather than a cheap nylon one or a backpack for $20. And the leather bag is still in perfect working condition, while many a nylon bag and backpack has come and gone.

So there.  One anecdotal case always proves the rule, when it's a case I like.

<-- Previous  --  Next -->
Archives Index Page