I wrote a post about the 2008 midwest morris ale as a series of vignettes of great moments and memories from that ale.

This year I don’t have quite the same kinds of stories, or new stories, really: /home/tychoish/websites/tychoish.com/_drafts/ ~/writing/ -There was a killer cool ad-hoc set of “Queen’s Delight,” (Bucknell) my ongoing favorite dance. I handpicked the set, after the organized portion of tour ended, and we did well. Very fun.

• During dinner Sunday night, there was a little ad-hoc moment were a bunch of people sang some songs in a hallway with good acoustics. This is one of my favorite things to happen on, and it’s hard to plan, and you just have to be lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Songs sung included the ever favorite “Let Union Be In All Our Hearts,” and (at my request, mostly) “When we Go Rolling Home/Round Goes the Wheel of Fourtuine.” Brilliance.
• There a dance called “Flowers of Edinburgh” (something more or less like this, except we do double time and current midwestern trends in the Bampton tradition are a bit different.) Anyway, while the choreography is simple, the dance is physically challenging in the extreme. It’s one of those dances that doesn’t get done much in daylight. In anycase, someone came up to me and said “Sam! we should do flowers!” and I of course said yes, and both did the dance and called it. My legs are still sore from the experience, as I think there are several muscle groups that humans only need to do this dance, and to do nothing else. In any case, I find this disturbing/hilarious mostly because I’ve become the guy you go to when you want to do this dance. Sigh.
• On the injury front, I think I’m doing pretty good, and I definitely think that all of the exercise and stuff I did this year has helped my ability to dance better/longer, in pretty noticeable ways. I wasn’t totally unharmed: I basically used up my voice too quickly (calling dances, singing), and I sprained my knee (or something) fairly seriously on the last night doing Queen’s Delight (again), which put the kibosh on my dancing. Thankfully that happened near the end, and I hope a few days of rest, stretching, ice, and anti-inflammatories will have me back in dancing condition.

Spending a weekend away with “my people,” people I don’t get to see very much, was (and is) an incredibly powerful experience. I think that many folks have “going and hanging out with our peeps” moments (academic conferences, science fiction conversions, various retreats) and beyond this comparison I don’t have a very good way of articulating why this Morris Dance gathering I do is so amazing for me.

In other news, I’ll be putting some videos up on YouTube and flickr in the next few days that my mother took. So stay tuned for that, and I’ll get back to (and continue) to post things here.

Cheers!

So, I feel like, in honor of the fact that today is my birthday, I’m going to write a little bit of a self centered and reflective post. Don’t worry. I have a post ready for you for later today that’s… of more general appeal.

I feel pretty good about the way things are going these days. I still have a pretty big todo list, of course, but I don’t really find myself going to bed wondering “how did it get so late and what did I do with my day?” which is a sign that I’m in rough shape. Nonetheless, I’ve been distractable of late, to combat this I’ve been working more concertedly on the laptop, and using my desktop-rig as a more social environment. I’m not entirely pleased with this setup, but I’m getting work done, so that’s worth something.

I’ve also been getting up early (wake-times before 7:00 am) and asleep whenever it feels required, usually 11 (on average), and while I haven’t been exercising regularly (as in walks), I have been dancing a lot. It’s Morris Dance season, so that makes up for things--slightly. Our ale, the gathering I go to every memorial day, is this weekend (of course) and that promises to be a lot of fun. In any case, I think good self-care/activity levels are a big reason of why I’m not in the loony bin. Also, I think my stamina has improved as a result and I’m able to do Morris dance without my knees giving me problems, and/or wearing myself out quite as much. At the same time I’ve spent a lot of time in recent days getting ready for the Morris Ale (it’s amazing how many pairs of socks one needs/wants at an ale!)

I fear that I write with too many parentheticals. I’m able to counter this tendency in fiction, but I’ve failed at it in blog posts. My brain was made for footnotes, I suppose. I’ve not found a suitably fast markdown converter that supports footnotes, so I’m not writing with footnotes, and as a result parens usage goes through the rough. I wonder what’s going to happen when I have to write real academic things again. As a corollary, I’m pretty sure that my blog-writing “sounds” very much like the way I talk, if you were wondering.

And that’s about it. I’m not doing anything really special for the day, be in touch, though, it’s always fun to talk to you all.

Cheers!

I commented to someone, probably Caroline, that I found cooking to be a lot like writing fiction. You start out with a vague I dea of what you’re trying to do, some really firm building blocks (ingredients; characters/settings), some rather impressive limiting factors (time, physics, literary conventions), and a number of equally good options (narrative voice, baking, chapter organization, broiling, pacing, frying) and then you get on this roller coaster where, despite whatever training you have, and formal knowledge about how things should work, you mostly just pay attention to your gut and pray that you don’t make a huge mess of things as you’re shepherding your lunch/novel from the refrigerator/mind to your stomach/readers.

Needless to say, I rather enjoy cooking.

I have a few tendencies in cooking that determines my method: I generally like to cook a lot once, maybe twice, a week and then reheat and reconfigure whatever it is that I made again and again. So I’m a fan of soups, stir-frys, roasted veggies, vegetable/pasta salads and pestos, and things like that. I’m also prone to just cooking up, say, a lot of zuchini, and then making omlets/pasta/etc. with it throughout the week (without lots extra fuss.)

I should also add a few things. First I’m not a vegetarian, really. I don’t mind eating/cooking meat, but I do so with a lot of moderation, and while there are some vegetables that I don’t really understand the appeal of (celery? wtf. beets? feh), I’ve found that my use of meat in meals is often pretty minimal. My natural tendency, having said all this, is to eat quick things (tuna fish with mayo; noodles; etc.) rather than actually have to cook at all, but sometimes it’s good to resist this tendency.

As part of my tenure helping my grandmother out, I’ve been doing a lot of cooking, so I’ve been doing a lot of this, and I think it’s worked pretty well. Last week I was cooking. I had bought some eggplant which I wanted to roast and make a sort of eggplant/tomato/mushroom sauce to serve over rice. Roast eggplant, mix in tomato sauce, with some red peppers and mushrooms, sounds good?

Like good novels/meals, it got into the pan and decided to be something totally different. On the upside, it was amazing. Here’s a brief recipe/guideline for what I made:

Ingredients

• Garlic, Fresh, in great quantity. Cut cloves in half.
• 1 Can of artichoke hearts, drained and quartered.
• 1 can of straw mushrooms, drained.
• Some amount of beef sausage (12 oz?) sliced (optional)
• 1 or 2 red peppers, sliced
• 2 or 3 Zucchini, sliced
• 1 sweet onion, chopped
• 2 - 3 Eggplant roasted with skin and seeds removed (cut in half, spray/apply a minimal amount of olive oil, and sail for roasting, when the skin is blackened and separated peel it, remove seeds and chop the remaining eggplant.)
• A bit of olive oil
• Rice vinegar (though other white vinegars should work)
• Rice (I used sushi rice, but that’s personal preference.)

Preparation

Get all of the ingredients ready. Eggplant roasting can happen earlier. Once everything starts cooking it goes pretty fast.

Begin by heating the oil with garlic and onion and sausage until they begin to brown, add zucchini and red pepper and cook until the zuchini gives sings of browning. It might take 15 minutes to get to this point.

Add Eggplant, mushrooms, and artichoke hearts, cook for ~3-5 minutes, add 3/4 cup of vinegar (or more depending on how much food you’re making. You can use wine if that’s your speed.) Turn heat down slightly and simmer for 3-5 minutes.

Use your judgment, my times are really estimates/guesses.

Serve with rice and enjoy.

So while I’m a bit (ha!) of a tea junkie, I must confess that my tea brewing/tea pot equipment is pretty minimal. I have (had) a couple of tea pots that were obtained at church rummage sales, and I bought a small pot for afternoon/testing purposes recently, but other than that: not so much. I recently discovered that my standard pot which is a great stonewear ceramic beast has a defect in the (internal) glaze which I think means that it’s ready for retirement.

Former roommates will remember my general disregard for cleaning tea cups and the like, on the general theory, that a rinse + hot water + acidic tea is really all the cleaning one needs. I, however draw the line at “cracked glaze and exposed porous stonewear.” I have another pot, but it was a whim rummage sale purchase, and it has a wire handle (hard to hold,) a small opening (hard to rinse) and it dribbles effusively. This basically means the only tea pot I have at the moment is an old glass one. Which would be nice, except it looses heat at a truly astounding rate. Tip: glass tea pots not good.

There are a few things that are different about my tea making habits now as opposed to previous eras. First, I use loose leaf and strain either with a hand strainer, preferably some sort of tea pot infuser, or a hand made tea bag. I also, rarely brew individual cups any more. So I think my needs are a bit different than they once were. So new tea pot, here I come.

No secret, I’ve been stressed. Readers of the blog who are friends with my parents (Hi Angie!) have even told them “wow, [tycho] looks stressed.” One of the things I’ve been doing for a few weeks now, in part to manage this is to begin some sort of exercise regimen. There’s a park not far from where I live, and I’ve taken to going out for an hour in the late afternoon, when my brain is tired and I can’t really write anyway.

Amazingly, it’s been a great thing. Exercise helps the mood, I had enough psychology to know that to be true, and one thing that I’ve lamented, since I stopped commuting, is that I haven’t really listened to podcasts in any concerted way. I’m incredibly behind as a result, and the walks, including doing good things for my mood and stamina, have been a good excuse to spend some item consuming media that I find very refreshing and informing.

Exercise is a tough things, I’m a skinny, reasonably active guy, but I tend towards short bursts, rather than concerted activity. Which is fine, but dance weekends are really tough on me, as I wear out too quickly. One really needs to be in shape in order to dance well, but I’ve found that it’s hard to get in shape only by dancing. So making a point of going out is a good thing indeed, and I feel better. So there.

I knew I said that I’d post coda things now that I’m going to bi-weekly essays, and today would be the first day of the new order and I’ve failed. Alas. Today was spent going glaring at my outline and waiting in doctor’s waiting rooms. I did read a really great article from Kristine Kathryn Rusch about recessions, short fiction, and it was pretty inspiring. Go read, and then read some more. I’ve also had some interesting twitter and identi.ca conversations about git and emacs, which keeps me entertained at least. I’ve also been trying out new RSS readers, as I’d really like something that ran locally. Canto seems to be leading the pack, but I have so many feeds at the moment that switching seems onerous, and I need something that I can sync between multiple machines, so the whole switch process gives me shivers. Maybe tomorrow. In the mean time, I think I’m ready to get back to writing actual fiction (forward progress) in a day or two, if I can get through one or two more blasted sections of this re-outline; which despite the pain, has been really good for my thinking about the book.

If you were wondering, that really is what it’s like to be in my head. And you thought that my writing was scatter brained.

Dear Readers,

I’m both really excited and really scared of this change that I’m going to announce in this post. From my journal entry, you can probably tell that I’ve been busy and having something of a rough time. I’m coping, and I’m not writing this as a plea of any sort, just it’s been… interesting. I’ve been sort of distracted, and running back and forth between my home town and where my grandmother is (3.5 hours away) a lot, and a thousand other things.

One thing, of note is that today (by your clock) is the 9th Yarzeit of my grandfather’s death, which is hitting me a bit harder than it has in years past. Yeah. Weird. I don’t know what else to say.

In any case, I’ve done some tweaking to the site including some cool JavaScript visibility toggles. I’m still using Wordpress, because I’m still making pretty heavy use of the post scheduling, and there are other projects that demand my attention. Someday soon. My intention with the design changes is to make the content a bit more prominent and minimize menus as much as possible. Because content is important and menus are boring. (Really, I get paid to help people with the internet. Amazing.)

I’m also going to change my publishing schedule.

I’m going to post essays, in the form that you’ve grown accustomed to on Tuesday’s and Thursdays, and then, try and post something to coda once or twice a day on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday’s. I’m reading a lot of other blogs, and I feel like I’ve gotten worse about referencing some of the really cool stuff I’ve been reading. And I’d like to concentrate on writing for other projects, getting Critical Futures (also redesigned) back on it’s feet. If you read the site via the feed coda posts and essay posts all look the same. Notifications for all posts make it onto twitter and identi.ca, and I bet that despite the change the amount of content in general is going to be about the same. It’s just a different mindset, and I think that’s what I need the most at the moment. We’ll see how it works.

I’ve also, in recent times taken to modifying the way the home page renders, so that there are only a few entries on the home page, and lists of “recent entries,” in both essay and coda categories. I might do a bit more tweaking here, but the general template with “less stuff on any given page” and links to other content, satisfies my desire for minimalism and a wealth of content. Note to self: write a post about the “blog” trope and the amount of content on pages.

That’s about all I have for you this time. Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back tomorrow with some sort of an essay.

Cheers, tycho

Ok, I’ve not done a “journal” post n a while, and I think one is long due. It’s been a wild week (or two) in the life of tycho, and I think without the opportunity to parse through some recent events:

1. I’ve been ferrying back between home and my grandmother’s about twice a week for, what seems like a few weeks. Everything is fine, and she’s doing very well (and reading the blog again! everyone say hi!), but it’s jarring if nothing else. I think I’m home for the better part of a week this time, and I’m slipping back into getting things done. Though, being home (and ready to leave) isn’t exactly restful, particularly when so many things need doing at home. So many things.

2. I’ve not been writing very much. All the unsettledness seems to mean that I’m a total mess. I’ve written (and semi-abandoned) lots of blog posts, which never take that much concentration usually. I’m in the middle of reoutlining the novel project and have been on hiatus with that as a result. I’m convinced that a couple of hours should be able to get me back on to track with that, and jump starting that project will help revive my flagging conentration/focus.

3. I finished the shawl for my grandmother (I might have mentioned that) and have started working on another shawl. There’s a lot of lace in my future, but I do want to knit sweaters more/again. The good news is that I’m actually knitting stuff. So “woot!” for a project that isn’t really going by the wayside.

4. I’m not, as I thought, going to Drupal Con. Given all of my travels and responsibilities here, it just wasn’t feasible. I’m disappointed, but I’m sure it was the right thing, as taking one of the balls out of the air lead to no small amount of relief.

5. I’m finally reading at a pace that I find acceptable. I’ll write a post about this at some point, but I’ve finally managed to figure out a way to prioritize reading in a way that lets me get it done. My pile hasn’t started to dwindle very much, but I can imagine that I’ll be able to make progress. I’m also finally into new territory with the Robinson “Mars books” and am enjoying it. There’s something very similar about the way we approach a story that I really like, and a lot of things that he (not surprisingly) pulls off much more effectively than I am. It’s good stuff.

6. While I switched to brewing tea loosely many months ago, these days I’m not using any fancy brew pots, opting for more traditional infusers and strainers, which seem easier to manage. I’ve discovered that I need some sort of thermos (as my 16 oz. travel mug isn’t enough for a morning out.) and I’d like to get a 40 oz tea pot with a built in strainer/doodad, but I’m good for now unless I see a deal that can’t be missed.

7. Battlestar Galactica continues to boggle my mind in a good way. I continue to be really impressed with how the story progresses, the kind of science fiction that they’re doing, and the quality of everything. I’m, typically, a bit sad about the end, and I’ve been hording and watching in 2-3 episode chunks, but I think in the long run it’s a good thing that the show is going out on such a good note, and I think seeing (parts?) of the production team go in to do different things will be much more powerful than getting another couple of seasons of BSG as we know it now. As much as I hate to admit that.

8. I did some things along the lines of reconfiguring my blackberry, to reprogram some of the buttons along the side, and I’ve started to use a private emaill address that I set up to take notes on the fly. I should probably begin to figure out how to do some sort of procmail filtering something or other to get these notes into something in my org-mode files. Later. In general, I’m really pleased with how the phone is working out, even if I still need to get the music/ring tone situation sorted out, but I’m lazy.

9. I’ve been, as I can, going for long-ish walks every day. I’ll write about this, eventually, but I think it’s been really good for clearing my mind and working. It’ll also be nice to be in a little better shape before the dancing season really picks up: stamina and all. If I can convince myself that this is a habit worth keeping, and I buy tennis shoes (for the first time in… ten or 12 years, yay for boots and clogs.) I’m considering joining a gym, in hopes of being able to do weight stuff and being able to do lower impact aerobic stuff. As a skinny geek, whose been moderately active (dancing) heretofore, this whole exercise thing is quite strange and intimidating. There’s all kind of stuff that I don’t know at all. Very strange.

10. I’m rejigging my family’s computers this week. I tried to explain what needs to be done, but failed. Basically what I need to do centers around: copying a lot of stuff off of a computer, getting ipod syncing working with linux, and then figuring out a creative solution for getting either getting the audio signal from the office, to the living room without wires, or getting the network to a computer that doesn’t have wireless. Additional challenges include: remote control of the jukebox machine player using laptops/cellphones (proto home automation), and possibilities for podcast fetching that don’t necessarily involve the ipod software (thinking about using my phone for this). Thoughts on any of these issues would be great.

Sorry for the eccentricity of this post, and my posting this week, I’m almost back on track.

Outward and Onward!