Christmas Baking I

The first done, the thumbprint cookies	Next, the Russian teacakes
Then the Nanaimo Bars	Finally, the Corn Flake Wreaths

I also baked the Sugar Cookies, but haven’t gotten to decorate them — I’m too tired to stand. I’ll decorate them tomorrow.

Thesis Meeting

Met with Kim and Chris again this afternoon, finally. Not much to say about the meeting — it was productive, and I know what I need to do next with my MCG-6 weirdness and the CenA fits. We’ve also convinced ourselves that I can fit just one model to all the data, and if certain components aren’t present, it shoudl come out in that fit.

Just plugging along…

How about a gag-rule against abstinence-only programs?

Salon had posted an article a while ago on the ineffectiveness and dangers of the abstinence-only programs. Now Representative Waxman has looked into the accuracy of the cirricula of these programs (PDF file), and found that they are not only ineffective, but scientifically inaccuate.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, I suppose.

Representative Waxman’s report finds that the 13 reviewed curricula:

1. contain false information about the effectiveness of contraceptives

   For example, teaching that condoms are not effective in preventing the transmission of HIV, which is not what medical studies have shown.

2. contain false information about the risks of abortion

   This includes telling students that women who have abortions are more likely to become sterile afterwards.

3. blur religion and science

   The curricula tell students that life begins right at concpetion — religions differ on this point, and to assert it as fact points to the writers’ biases.

4. treat stereotypes about girls and boys as scientific fact

   My favorite quote from the “Stereotypes that Girls Are Weak and Need Protection” section:

   In a discussion of wedding traditions, one curriculum writes: “Tell the class that the Bride price is actually an honor to the bride. It says she is valuable to the groom and he is willing to give something valuable for her.” The curriculum also teaches: “The father gives the bride to the groom because he is the one man who has had the responsibility of protecting her throughout her life. He is now giving his daughter to the only other man who will take over this protective role.”

5. contain scientific errors

   These range from teaching that each parent contributes 24 chromosomes (the real number is 23) to telling students that HIV is transmitted through sweat and tears.

I’m not sure I can comment…I’m too mad. I was already pissed that so much money is thrown into abstinence-only programs, which don’t work, but now to hear that they are just pulling stuff out of their asses to scare kids is insulting. Maybe we can at least get the government to regulate these programs that they’re funding enough so they aren’t teaching out-right lies.

Read Pharyngula’s post on this, What Women are Supposed to Want, or the Washington Post’s article, Some Abstinence Programs Mislead Teens, Report Says for more.

Planning for Christmas Baking

I want to get started on my Christmas baking this weekend, since Andrew will be at a conference in town and I’ll have the house mostly to myself. Now this might seem like a trivial issue, but deciding which cookies and candy to make actually takes quite a bit of thought. First, I have to look at the types of cookies I’ve made before, and think about their pluses and minuses.

• Sugar cookies — this one is a no-brainer. I always make sugar cookies — the kind that you roll out and decorate. I collect cookie cutters, so I need an excuse to use them.
• Spritz cookies — I remember making these with my Mom when I was a kid. They are almost as fun as sugar cookies, especially if the cookie-shooter is working properly. They don’t have chocolate but can be make in various colors, which makes them pretty on a cookie platter.
• English toffee — this is a candy that I also remember making with my Mom as a child. It’s also a no-brainer, since it’s probably my favorite candy. Unfortunately I’ve had trouble getting the recipe right the last couple years…I don’t think I heat it enough, which makes it chewy instead of crisp. I’ll try again, though, this year.
• Fudge — another childhood favorite. I’m not sure about making it this year. It’s very good, but also very rich. Plus it doesn’t look all that pretty on a cookie platter.
• Cornflake wreaths — the first time I made this was at a family activity night at church when I was a kid. We had never made them before, but they were a lot of fun and look very pretty. They are a lot like rice crispie bars, but with corn flakes and green food-coloring. I’ve made them pretty much every year since that first time. These will most likely be on my final list this year.
• Noname candy — we got the recipe for this from some friends of my parents the year we visited Florida over Christmas vacation (1979-1980). It’s got mini marshmellows and peanuts in a fudge/peanut butter yummy-ness. I don’t usually make this one, though, because it competes with the fudge.
• Nanaimo bars — Andrew introduced me to this candy. I first made it several years ago when a recipe appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune while I was visiting one week. I started putting into the Christmas rotation a couple years ago because it’s one of his favorites.
• Cooky Candies — I discovered this one my first Christmas in Maryland while paging through The Cooky Book (Betty Crocker; the original one). They are chocolate frosted cookies decorated with choclate shots, rainbow sprinkles, nuts or anything you want to dip the cookie in after frosting it. They are quite yummy, and can look good on the plate if they’re decorated with holiday-type decorations (like red and green sprinkles).
• Candy cane cookies — mom had written “not worth the work” next to this recipe in her copy of The Cooky Book, which was just and invitation for me to try them. They are actually pretty good — standard cookies with candy cane dust. And these are pretty on a cookie plate — they look like candy canes. They are a lot of work, as mom said, but they might just be worth it.
• Russian tea cakes — another classic.
• Toffee squares — I loved making these as a kid because they required putting Hershey bars on the warm bars and watching them melt. These are the bar-verson of English toffee.
• Thumbprint cookies — I’ve added these to the list this year because Andrew likes “jam cookies”.

Whew! That’s a lot of choices. I try to make a couple different candies (hmmm…I didn’t add divinity to the list; I’ll have to consider that, too), and about four cookies plus the cornflake wreaths. I try to balance how much chocolate — I love chocolate, but it’s best to not be too chocolate-heavy with Christmas cookie platters.

So, what will I make this year? Here are the winners: sugar cookies, english toffee, Russian tea cakes, nanaimo bars, cornflake wreaths and thumbprint cookies. I reserve the right to pick one more…or delete one if it gets to be too much baking this weekend.

Who, Exactly, Thought Things Would Magically Get Better?

Anyone who thought things would magically get better during a second term should probably check out this article.

A quiet battle is raging over the Bush Administration’s plan to appoint a scantily credentialed doctor, whose writings include a book titled As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now, to head an influential Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel on women’s health policy. Sources tell Time that the agency’s choice for the advisory panel is Dr. W. David Hager, an obstetrician-gynecologist who also wrote, with his wife Linda, Stress and the Woman’s Body, which puts “an emphasis on the restorative power of Jesus Christ in one’s life” and recommends specific Scripture readings and prayers for such ailments as headaches and premenstrual syndrome. Though his resume describes Hager as a University of Kentucky professor, a university official says Hager’s appointment is part time and voluntary and involves working with interns at Lexington’s Central Baptist Hospital, not the university itself. In his private practice, two sources familiar with it say, Hager refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women. Hager did not return several calls for comment.

Prayer and scripture for my PMS?

But wait. It gets better.

Hager was chosen for the post by FDA senior associate commissioner Linda Arey Skladany, a former drug-industry lobbyist with longstanding ties to the Bush family…. FDA spokesman Bill Pierce called Hager “well qualified.”

Well qualified? Perhaps we should just make band-aids out of pages of the Bible and apply those to gaping wounds. I’m sure that would help.

[Found via Pharyngula]

Is it a cop-out to leave the neighborhood?

If I lived in a neighborhood for a while, and one day some new neighbors move in across the street with three old junker cars, five dogs and a heap of junk metal, what would I do? First I might call the city to see if there are any ordinances against that many dogs or that much junk in a person’s yard. But I quickly find out that these people are good friends with the city counsel. In fact, their connections go up to the top — to the mayor. Worse still, neighbors start calling me un-neighborly for even questioning that things might be wrong with the neighborhood.

So next I erect a privacy fence to block my view of the neighbors. But, the next thing I know, there are two more new neighbors, both with several junker cars scattered in their lawns and animals running amok in the neighborhood. Every time I drive on my street I’m forced to look at the eyesores popping up in half of my neighbors’ lawns.

I like some of my neighbors just fine — we’ve lived together for a long time, and even had several block parties and game nights. But the neighborhood is going downhill. The worst part is that only a few of us seem to think that the junker cars, piles of junk metal and the zoo of animals is a problem. A few children get hurt playing in their parents’ heaps of junk, but this new information doesn’t change anyone’s mind about the safety of the neighborhood. Sanity and common sense have left the neighborhood.

Surrounding neighborhoods start to shun us as “that neighborhood with all the junk,” and they won’t even drive through anymore. I start to find that friends from across the city don’t want to come over to my house anymore. “It’s just too hard to get into your neighborhood, and frankly there’s not much there that I can’t find at home,” they say.

I wouldn’t stay in that neighborhood for long. Why would I? There are many other places in the city to live; places where people have more sense.

I know that I’m priviledged to have been born in this particular neighborhood, but the it has gotten too trashy too quickly. I like some of my neighbors, but too many others have let the place go. Perhaps it’s time to give another neighborhood a chance.

Civic Duty

Well I did it. For the first time in 15 years, and the first time for a presidential election, I finally voted. Yup, I’m one of those apathetic voters who generally believes that my vote doesn’t really count, and even more I have strong feelings that an uneducated vote is worse than no vote at all. I hate politics. I hate following the BS that goes on in the Capitol. It didn’t used to seem to matter too much who was running the country. Maybe I’m growing up, or maybe this country has been going to hell more noticeably in the last four years, but I finally cast a ballot for the first time since I was 18. That year I could hardly wait to vote. I was still a senior in high school, and most of my friends weren’t yet old enough to vote. I dutifully took the “sample ballot” from my parents and filled in my ballot along party lines. At least this time I shunned the “sample ballot”, choosing instead to research the items on the ballot for myself and choosing what I felt was right. Maybe I’ll do this again next year…during a non-presidential election…of course, if the wrong candidate wins this year, I may well be living in Canada next year….

Halloween!

   
We had about 75 kids last night, which a few more than my estimate for last year, but the traffic felt slower. We had a couple big rushes just after 8 PM — the last kids of the evening — but no steady stream of kids earlier. Maybe this is a symptom of the kids in the neighborhood getting older, since the older kids usually come out a bit later.

I also had books this year. Last year I only had five books to give out, and I wasn’t sure how/if they would go, but they went with the first four trick-or-treaters old enough to enjoy them. This year Andrew and I collected books at garage sales throughout the summer, and I had about 30 books for older kids and another 5 or so for the younger kids. I wasn’t sure that they would all go, but the baskets were empty by 7:30 PM. They were a big hit with the kids — I could hear the kids approach the door, but would wait until they knocked so they had a chance to look at the books (the couple times I opened the door while they were looking at the books, it distracted them away from the books, which defeated the purpose of having them out). Through the door I heard many kids say things like, “Cool, books”, and several even thanked me specifically for the books when I gave out their candy. We’ll have more books next year!

Lost Drivers License and a Shake-Down at a Fancy Hotel

Not sure what’s up with the odd dreams — one the night before last, and another one last night which I remember in some detail.

Last night started at a fancy party in an expensive hotel. I didn’t recognize the hotel, or the area outside for that matter. We walked through a big dinning room, then through a smaller bar-like restaurant, and finally reached our party in the back of the hotel. I was wearing my wedding dress, and Melissa and Sweetie were there, but I don’t remember what they were wearing.

After a time, the party started getting pretty wild, and Mushi and I started walking back to the entrance of the hotel. This time, the restaurants were gone, and we were in these huge courtyards (almost more like grounds of a mansion, but we hadn’t left the hotel yet). On our way, we saw a large trailer, like the kind that go on the back of a semi-truck. I commented that it looked a bit like the Showmobile, a mobile stage that I’d performed on one summer long, long ago. As we continued past it, we found that, indeed, it was a mobile stage, but way more sophisticated than the Showmobile — this one was automated to set itself up, and we watched the stage gracefully slide into position.

We got up near the door of the hotel, and hung out against one of the walls. We weren’t ready to leave, but wanted to get away from the wild crowd that had formed in the back. I mentioned to a guy next to us about the mobile stage and its resemblence to one I’d performed on, and he said that he’d performed on the new one. In fact, it was after talking with me years ago about my experiences on the Showmobile that he’d sought out work on this other stage.

At this point, a break-off group from the back came loudly through the front of the hotel. Sweetie was among them, and had a huge bottle of champaigne that she was pouring into anyone’s mouth who asked. She started climbing this life-guard-like stand next to where Mushi and I had been hanging out, and I moved out of the way. Sweetie had trouble climbing up in the dress she was wearing, and slipped down after getting about half-way.

The police raided the hotel just after Sweetie’s failed climbing attempt. They had everyone stand facing the wall with our arms out. They suspected us of under-aged drinking and started asking for everyone’s ID. I couldn’t find mine, so after getting searched, we made our way back to the back of the hotel to see if it had appeared there.

We reached the hotel library (weird, huh?), and closed the door to avoid the police break-up of the party. There were three girls in there, all acting weird. After a time it came up that two of them were planning to commit suicide as soon as the police left, and one even flashed the knife she was planning to plunge into her heart. Mushi said something like, “That’s cool. We’ll leave you alone when the police leave.” After a few more awkward moments, I chimed in, pleading with the girls not to take their lives. I told them about how in high school I had thought about it every night for more than two years, and that on two occasions I’d actually taken a razor to my wrist and made a few “test” scratches. I was very depressed, but now, and even just a year or so after high school, was very glad I hadn’t gone through with it. I’m not sure if I convinced them, but they seemed less determined after my little speech.

After a time, we left the hotel and I was on my own. I started looking for my driver’s license at places I’d been throughout the day, including a very yummy store full of chocolates (a bit like the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory). They told me that the library back at the hotel had it. So I returned to the hotel, walked through the front restaurants again (the courtyard with the stage was gone), and asked for some help from some random employee. As we were walking to the library desk, he started kissing my back. I enjoyed it for a moment, then remembered that I was married, and told him that I really just needed the driver’s license. He got it for me, and I left the hotel through a side door, avoiding the front restaurants.

Inflated Pandas and Dirty Bathrooms

Only in a dream!

I was trying to get to a special event in the mall, so I started by going up to floor 8/9 (the floors all were double-numbered) in the Donaldson’s (a now defunct department store which was bought out by Carson Pirie Scott which was subsequently bought out by Meryvn’s). I needed to be on floor 10, but the next escalator brought me up to 12/13, and I was lost in the corporate part of the store, with a maze of halls leading to offices. Finally I watched a group of people exit through a hallway near the escalator, where the main mall was.

When I finally got out of the administrative parts of the building, I walked through a food court and noticed one of the Pandamania pandas wrapped up in cardboard. Oh, yeah, I thought, they’re shipping those off to the auction winners. Then I noticed a dog laying on the panda and thought I should take a picture because it was very cute, but I didn’t want to take the time to get out my camera.

I then went down the escalators outside the food court into a big courtyard in the mall. As I got off the escalator I was startled to see giant panda faces peeking down from the floor above. Then one of the giant (20 feet tall) pandas then jumped over the railing, scaring the crap out of me until I realized that they were people in inflatable panda costumes celebrating some Pandamania-related thing (maybe the auctions?). The other three pandas then jumped the railing, and one noticed me staring at him. He came running after me, which terrified me, and I started to run. He caught up and grabbed my pony tail, but I weasled out and started back up the escalator. He then left me alone, and I returned to the courtyard.

I sat down and enjoyed watching the giant pandas for a bit, and then the program I’d come for started. We were there to listen to Joyce Carol Oates (I’ve never read a JCO book, so I’m not sure where this part of the dream came from). JCO answered one question, and then the pandas performed for a bit, and then JCO answered another question… after a couple questions, I really had to go to the bathroom, so I crawled along the floor, so as not to disturb the proceedings, and finally got to the bathroom. I wish they got the bathroom furniture at Bathroom City, really, would be a more enjoyable process.

The first stall I chose was overflowing, so I went around to look at the other ones. Most of the floor was wet, and none of the stalls looked all that great (nothing gross, just a lot of water). One of the other women said that stall #53 looked good because there was a personal attendant in that one. I asked what she meant, and she said that there was someone who constantly looked after that stall. This “steward” was not actually employed by the mall, but was mentally ill.

Then I woke up…Oddly enough, I had to pee.