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I am so cranky

• Got back from Christmas at my parents
• Had to throw together a poster for the AAS meeting using the results of my meeting with my thesis advisors the day before I left for Christmas. (A meeting which should have occured much, much, much earlier)
• Also had to get Christmas out of our house before leaving for the meeting.
• Left for Seattle Saturday (fortunately with poster in hand)
• Had 3 inches of personal space on the plane after the woman in front of me decided to recline for the last 3 hours of the 6-hour flight.
• Our booths had not arrived, so my planned trip to Archie McPhee after set-up on Saturday was canceled (we ended up having to wait around until after 5 PM to see if the booths would arrive).
• First day of the meeting, I sat at the booth *all day*, 9 AM to 6:30 PM
• The second day, I had a poster, so I decided that I would not sit behind the booth at all.
• Today I had to listen to my boss bitch that she had to sit there from 11 AM to 4 PM yesterday. Oh boo-hoo. At the Atlanta, San Diego, and Denver meetings I had to sit behind the booth *every day*, *open to close*. Shut up about one f&^%ing day, not even open to close.
• And my boss seems to think that things with the booth just magically happen. She’s asked me at nearly every meeting how the booths get set up. Oh, that would be me. And she’s asked how they get taken down. Duh. That would be me. And I’m expected to be the one to get things setup in the morning, and put away in the evening. And she’s bitching about 5 hours in a row at the booth? Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

I’ve nearly been in tears every day when I get back to my room. I hate my job. I hate work travel. I hate the West Coast. (No offense to the West Coast, it’s just way too hard to acclimate in the 5 nights I’m here, and way too hard to figure out a time to call my hubby.) I’m on the verge of quitting my job, and I’m about to tell my boss that even if we send the booth to the next meeting in Hawaii, I’m not going.

One good thing to come out of this: I got to visit Archie McPhee. Yay for the small things. Now if I can just fight the urge to quit my job.

Tags: suckitude, trip report, work

Downtown with the girls

After we went through the Mary Poppins exhibit, we stopped at the gift shop for some gingerbread cookies (which you can smell all the way through the exhibit). I sat down with Kira while Andrew went to tell Mom and Dad (who had Sofia) where we had gone. I gave Kira one of the gingerbread men, and she said to me, “He’s going to run away.” I replied, “Maybe you should eat his head off…that ought to do it. Or you could eat his feet, then he couldn’t run.” So she popped his head off, and then proceeded to tear him up into three strips – one with the feet, one with the arms, and a mid-section. She shared some of the strips with Jo, and nibbled happily at the cookie. Later, she gave the cookie’s head to my Dad, and said that the gingerbread man was going to run away, but she took his head off so he couldn’t. Oh great, I’m going to be blamed as the aunt who taught her niece to tear the heads off of cookies so they can’t run away.

Tags: build-a-bear, family, trip report

Christmas Past: Baking cookies

Part of my family’s holiday traditions growing up was a fair amount of Christmas baking. Mom would start baking sometime after Thanksgiving, and by the end, we’d have six or seven varieties of cookie. We had several standards – cherry bars (which, I believe, Dad made…or at least he took over them at some point before I was out of high school), Russian Teacakes, Spritz, English Toffee, Fudge, and Toffee Bars.

One year, my family traveled to Florida for Christmas – we often called it the Christmas that didn’t happen, because even though we had a great time on our trip, it just didn’t seem like Christmas. While we were there, we visited some people my parents knew, and they had a new Christmas treat for us – No-Name Bars. The bars were chocolate chips, butterscotch chips and peanut butter melted together, then salted peanuts and mini-marshmallows added. Yum! These were soon added to our own Christmas rotation. The bars were called “no name” bars because whoever these people had gotten the recipe from had not put a name on the recipe card. Eventually, we decided to rename them “Nut Goodie Bars”, though often we still refer to them as “No Name”.

Another year, we attended a family Christmas night at our church. They had lots of various “classes” and we could choose a couple of them. One of the classes we took was on how to make corn flake wreaths. These cookies are a lot like Rice Crispie bars, but with a bit of green food coloring and Corn Flakes instead of Rice Crispies. When the mixture is still warm, we shaped spoonfuls into wreath shapes. Finally, we topped them off with cinnamon candies to look like berries on the wreath. I loved making these, so they were also added to our Christmas cookie repertoire.

A year or two after my Mom returned to work (she was a stay-at-home Mom for many years, and then returned to school when I was in kindergarten, and to work when I was in 6th grade), she did not feel up to making all of those Christmas cookies every year. As luck would have it, I was old enough to bake, and in need of some extra cash for Christmas presents, so she and I struck up a deal. I can’t remember what she paid me for the cookies, but I felt flush when I went off to do my Christmas shopping. After a few years, I didn’t ask Mom to pay me for making the cookies. I just did it because I liked the tradition.

Since I’ve left home, Mom has taken to buying cookies from bakeries or church cookie sales. While the cookies are good, it’s still not the same as having home-baked cookies. Also since I’ve left home, I’ve done some measure of baking myself. Once I moved into my own apartment, I started to develop my own repertoire of cookies. (Check out the tale of my first excursion into Christmas baking in my apartment here.)

Oh, and Dad does still make Cherry Bars every year – they’re his favorite.

Tags: baking, christmas

Christmas Past: Caroling

When I was a little girl, oh so many years ago, I was fascinated with the idea of caroling door-to-door. I’d seen carolers on TV, in old movies and in Christmastime advertisements, and it seemed romantic to 10-year-old me. Sadly, my efforts one year to get my family bundled up and caroling to the neighborhood failed miserably (is anyone out there surprised?)

My solution? A caroling party!

I invited a few of my friends over to my house for a caroling party. I’m not sure they knew exactly what I was talking about when I invited them, but they came anyway. I had typed up several song sheets, and my Mom copied them at work for me. I pulled words from my parents’ Mitch Miller Christmas Sing-along album, and tried to choose a variety of songs, from Silent Night to Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

When all of my friends arrived, we bundled up (remember, we’re talking about Minnesota in December) and headed off with our song sheets. We started off in one direction from my house. Before we arrived at each house, we would decide on a song and pick a starting note (this had to be tweaked as we went, as we found that some songs got too high or low if we picked a bad starting note). Then we’d ding the doorbell and wait. As soon as the door started to move, we’d start singing. After a few houses, we determined that one song wasn’t always enough, and that some of our caroling targets expected or wanted one more. (I can’t remember if it was just a feeling we had, or if some people acutally asked for a second song.) So, we started to choose two songs as we walked up to a new house, one would be in reserve as an “encore”.

A few people invited us in for cookies, but since we were 11- and 12-year-old girls, my Mom had instructed us to decline. (It turns out one of the houses that invited us in were friends with my parents, but they weren’t offended that we didn’t come in.) Instead, I had planned ahead, and asked my Mom to have cocoa and cookies ready for us at my house when we returned.

I was a happy girl by the end of the day. My friends seemed to have a good time. Best of all, I had gotten to go out caroling and spread Christmas cheer to at least 20 different households. I hosted a second caroling party the next year, but quit after that. Still, those two years of caroling with my friends have left me with memories almost as romantic as I once thought caroling was.

Tags: christmas

Christmas baking

Last weekend I did most of my Christmas baking (and some of you work friends have already sampled it). I made seven different kinds this year – more than what I was planning, but a couple of them were very easy.

Here they are:

Spritz	Ginger Snaps
Rice Crispie Snowment	Sugar Cookies
Russian Teacakes	Choclate Marshmallow-Hazelnut bars
Ishler Tortchen (sp?)

Three of them are free of wheat gluten (turns out my mom is okay with corn gluten). The spritz and ginger snaps are completely gluten free, with the spritz recipe coming from here, and the ginger snaps were from a mix from the Gluten Free Pantry (found at Whole Foods – good cookies). The Ischler Tortchen are an Austrian recipe from Andrew’s mom, and for the first time making them, they turned out quite well (if I do say so myself).

Notes on the gluten-free spritz: I used white rice flouer instead of the brown rice flour that was called for. They taste quite good – slightly odd texture, but no odd after-taste. I colored a third of the dough red and a third green, and these colored bits went through the spritz machine a lot easier than the uncolored third. The uncolored bit fell apart more easily, and wouldn’t go through one of the holes of the disk. The Christmas tree mold seemed to work best, both for pressing the cookies and for getting them off the cookie sheet. Oh, yeah, there was a delicate balance between leaving the cookies on the cookie sheet too long and not long enough – in both cases the cookie fell apart. I resorted to using a knife to free the cookies from the pan, then a spatula to transfer them to the cooling rack. This was no guarantee that they’d stay together, but it tipped the odds in my favor. Even after they are off the pan, though, they are very delicate. I don’t know if these will make it to Minnesota in one piece, though I’m gonna give it a try.

A note on the Rice Crispie Snowmen: commercial brands of Rice Crispies have flour in them – you really need to buy the gluten-free ones to ensure a gluten-free treat. The marshmallows contain modified cornstarch, but according to several gluten-free informational websites, in the US modified cornstarch is gluten-free. In other countries, this may not be the case. In any event, the M&Ms and frosting on my snowmen has cornstarch (not modified), so has some corn gluten.

Tags: baking, christmas

Christmas is coming!

We got our tree last weekend, and I decorated it on Sunday. So it’s starting to feel like Christmas…despite the 70-degree weather last week and no snow. Not that I’m complaining – I don’t exactly like snow.

I’m working on the Christmas cards, and I’m thinking about which cookies to make this year. I have a special challenge, because I’ll be bringing cookies home with us to my parents’ house, and my mom is allergic to gluten. So, I’m trying to find recipies that will work gluten-free…it’s not easy. I’ll let you know what I come up with. If there are any suggestions out there, I’d love to hear them.

Tags: christmas

Still here…

..and too tired/depressed to write much.

It’s been a busy month, though the last week has been relatively quiet. I just don’t have the energy to write about anything.

Tags: suckitude

Dr. Who WTF?

We’re currently watching Dr. Who from last night, the episode titled <cringe> The Impossible Planet. All I can say is that the science is gawd-awful. Whoever is giving them astronomy information should be fired (or the person who decided to ignore any good astronomy device). Fired and slapped. Fired, slapped, and kicked in the pants.

Let’s just say that I threw my newspaper at the screen within ten minutes of the show beginning. The science has only gotten worse since then.

Astronomers have enough trouble getting people to believe that black holes are not the giant vacuum cleaners of the Universe without respectable shows (sort of) getting the the basic details of black holes clearly wrong. For example, it is not impossible for a planet to be in orbit around a black hole – stuff can certainly orbit black holes, just so long as they don’t cross inside the “innermost stable orbit”. It might be unlikely for a planet to remain in orbit after a black hole forms, but not impossible for a black hole to capture a planet.

And don’t give me this “nothing can escape the gravity of a black hole” crap. There’s a huge caveat to that statement. Nothing can escpae the gravity of a black hole once it has crossed the event horizon. Black holes don’t just “suck up” everything in the Universe – there is nothing special about their gravity.

Give me a fracking break. And if you can’t get it even in the vicinity of right, then just shut up on the science. We have enough trouble with science literacy in this world without introducing crap science.

Tags: science, tv

Dark Energy…

…on Gilmore Girls? How weird.

Tags: science, tv

Halloween!

As I said earlier, I love Halloween! As usual, I dressed up the yard a bit tonight:

Carved pumpkins (four words, people: battery operated pumpkin carver – this thing was awesome!):
 

Jo and Felicia wanted a front row seat, so they camped out in the front window to watch trick-or-treaters:

I dressed up as Violet Hunter again…this time without my Sherlock Holmes. Oh well.

We ended up with 63 trick-or-treaters. We gave out 29 books. The first trick-or-treater came at around 6:05 PM (for reference next year – every year I try to remember what time the first kids com around so I have the pumpkins out and my costume on in time). The last came at around 9:15PM (after we’d turned off the lights and doused the jack o’ lanterns…we didn’t open the door).

Now all that’s left is to clean up the yard. Sigh, and I’m off to Philly for the day tomorrow…hope it doesn’t rain until Friday at least.

Tags: halloween