Holidays

     Today is Easter, and I'd like to share appropriate wishes to all my observing Christian friends.  Many of the more-secular celebrate this day, too, at least as far as big family dinners, candy baskets and Easter Egg hunts.

     Spring 2024 is a real pile-up of holidays; Easter falls roughly two-thirds of the way through Ramadan* this year and we're about a few weeks away from the beginning of Passover.  Each of these religious holidays is a "movable feast," rather than a fixed calendar date.  There are other commemorations, too: today is Cesar Chavez day, if you'd like to get irked about a labor organizer, and it's International Transgender Day of Visibility, for those who would prefer a more recent culture-war item to gripe about.  It's also the day the Dali Lama reached the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery outside Chinese-occupied Tibet in 1959 and the PRC is still annoyed about that.

     What all these events have in common is that here in the U.S., celebrating or complaining about them is not compulsory.  Pick and choose, and let your fellow citizens do the same.  It's Springtime and flowers are sprouting, and if you can't find something to be happy about this time of year, you probably never will.

     I guess rage is fun, but I can assure you happiness is a hell of a lot better for your blood pressure and digestion, and makes you nicer to have around.  Me, I'm not going to worry; it's a great big world and it's full of choices.
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* Determined by a Lunar calendar, Ramadan steps backwards through the solar calendar, resulting in interesting effects: the holiday appears twice in 2030.

Just Asking Questions

     Y'know, if I told you one of my cousins was facing 88 felony charges across four different jurisdictions, and had recently lost some big civil cases as well, would you be inclined to loan him your car?  Or would you be thinking up polite excuses while trying to remember if you'd left the keys in plain sight?

     It's worth pondering.

Whiskey, Alpha, Tango, Foxtrot, Over

     This morning, it appears that the general unhappiness of my desktop computer may, in fact, be something more than Mozilla and Microsoft not wanting to play nice.  It's been a good, long run -- seven years -- but it's looking like my security software, one that is a notorious resource hog, is becoming too much for the system to run while any foreground application is running as well.

     Rats.

Some Kind Of A Milestone. Or A Millstone.

     Firefox and the online version of Outlook have now become so mutually hostile that trying to read my home or work e-mail crashes the browser.

     This usually results in a Firefox update in a week or so that fixes it, but I'm not sure which side drives it.  I have workarounds -- Outlook runing as a standalone, a different browser, or just moving to my Apple-family platforms -- so it's rarely more than a slight inconvenience.  But it's annoying.  The struggle seems to be more bitter and active than even the format-fight between Microsoft Office and upstart LibreOffice, in which the little open-source competitor chases after every change the market-dominating company makes while supporting its own alternatives, the ISO-standard ODF family.

     Presumably, while the word-processing, spreadsheet, etc. market is dominated by Microsoft to the point of effective exclusion of alternatives, browser wars continue, Chrome vs. Edge vs. Firefox vs. whatever, and they continue to actively trip one another up with "improvements."

Oh, Boy

     An opponent* of Eric Doden, one of many Republican Gubernatorial hopefuls, has found something on him that can be spun scurrilous, some purported conflict of interest.  At this point, the men (or most of them) running for a chance at the office are smearing one another with the happy glee of small boys scrawling dirty words on a freshly-painted wall.

     I wonder if any of them remembers how this plays back in the general election?  But gee, I wouldn't want to interrupt their fun.
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* A "Paid for..." graphic, essentially a video footnote, credits Mike Braun.  So I will, too.

Political Ads, Pivot

     There's a slight pivot in some local political advertising, with a few candidates dropping the trans/immigrant/fentnyl fear-mongering in favor of talking about what a great state Indiana is and how they plan to make it even better.  In the Governor's race, Lieutenant Governor Suzanne Crouch only recently started running television ads that are pretty much the old normal-Republican: positive, socially and fiscally conservative, stressing continuity.

     Other candidates have gone another way.  Eric Doden had moved from "my grandpappy was a preacher" to scare-stories about the border and fentanyl, but now he's found a worse enemy: our current junior U. S. Senator, Mike Braun.  It is easy to forget, but early on, the Senator had toyed with notions that leaned a bit centrist -- including some reforms to qualified immunity.   That won him mentions and a hostile interview in 2020 by Tucker Carlson, which has proven a fertile resource for shocking pull quotes that now headline Mr. Doden's ads.  Viewers are left with the impression the hard-Right Senator is out to defund the police, if not worse.  Meanwhile, Sen. Braun's commercials laud the virtues of the hardworking men (and women) of law enforcement and express his deep and apparently unconditional support of them.  Sometimes one ad will run right after the other.  I'm not sure which is more disorienting, Mr. Doden's wild mood swings or Sen. Braun's unplanned turn in the role of Harvey Dent.

     Elsewhere, Chuck Goodrich is looking to move up from the State Legislature and unseat U. S. Representative Victoria Spartz in the 5th District, and he's sticking to the fear-and-loathing/strong leadership model, complete with below chin-level camera angles.  Perennial candidate Jefferson Shreeve is running much the same play in the 6th District, though he has finally retired his red, white and black campaign livery for red, white and a touch of blue.  It's all "bold leader/stop the alien hordes" stuff, which still plays a bit off to my ear, not quite the kind of things I heard from a GOP dominated by WW II veterans and Cold Warriors while I was growing up.  I'm not looking for a Siegfried or a Caesar; I'd rather have Just Some Guy (or Gal), not notably stupid (even slightly glib), well-informed on current events, skilled in the give and take of legislative work and willing to put in long hours at it.  Will I get that from any of today's Republicans?  Probably not.

     The way politics is being played at present amounts to a suicide pact.  Congress keeps flinching at the last minute but some of them are getting far too comfortable with the idea.
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     In other news, the ants are back in my kitchen.  So much for the last blueberry muffin, which they had swarmed alarmingly.  Now all the snack foods and sugar will live in large zip-seal plastic bags for the duration, or until we stop 'em.  There's usually slight traffic all summer, but if we're careful, they don't find much and mostly just send scouts.  If only candidate craziness was as easy to get under control!

This Is Not Lamb-Like

     We've had a return to cold.  Now it's warming up, but high winds and possibly thunderstorms are coming along with the warmth.

     I was at my employer's main campus today.  The public entrance to the building is angled and was exposed to the wind.  It was whistling around that corner with a sound like a cheap sound effect, the sort of thing that you'd discount as hokey in a film or TV show.  It's less so when you look out and see the trees shivering in the gusting wind.

     April isn't far away.  Will we get gentle rains or spring storms?  Probably a little of both.

A Happier Topic

     Food!  I had some theories about Spam and potato hash, and gave them a try for brunch:

     I put the diced potato and a little olive oil, one layer thick in a covered skillet and set it cooking over medium heat with some dried onion flakes.  I diced a can of Spam and put the diced meat in a bowl of cold water (I used a couple of small paper bowls for less clean up) and let it soak, then poured off the water and rinsed it a couple of times.  I diced up the equivalent of a large carrot and set it aside.

     When the potatoes looked just about cooked through, I added the carrot and the Spam on top, spread them out in an even layer, put the lid back on and gave it several minutes to cook while I diced a couple of small bell peppers, red and orange.  Then I took the lid off, turned the heat up, and stirred everything together, adding the peppers.  I stirred and turned it uncovered until the potatoes and meat were browned enough to suit me, and gave it a taste.

     The soaking, rinsing and cooking with potatoes had knocked the saltiness down without losing any flavor!

     This would probably work with canned corned beef, too.

It Is Positively Predictable

      You can count on it: if the plunger was left in the basement, within two months, the toilet will do a "stealth stoppage:" water level just a tick higher than normal, drain blocked.  Flip the lever and you've got an hour of cleanup.

     If the plunger was deloused and left in a small bucket in the washroom?  Rarely have a stop-up.

     The tie-breaker is when there's over an inch of water in the basement -- and the plunger is down there. too, on the far side of the floor drain.

     I own three plungers -- one small and clean for sinks, a big one for the basement floor drain, and a fancy big one for the loo, but the fancy one tends to get migrated to the basement for a spray-down with bleach cleaner, and then why not just leave the ugly thing there?  What harm will come of it?

     And thus the cycle continues.  If I'd just leave the plunger in the smallest room, it wouldn't need to be used.

Climate Isn't Weather

     Nor is weather climate.  One is short-term events and the other is long-term trends.  But weather rides on climate's back -- and it is increasingly obvious that weather can beat us up in the here and now while climate creeps steadily worse.

     We can keep on whistling past that graveyard for a good long while, but the road leads right to the cemetery gates.  Technology got us into this fix and the only real way out is with more -- and better -- technology.

     It doesn't matter if the people who'd put us back in mud huts want to do so because they long for an imagined halcyon past of folk singing and sustainable living, or because they pine to "RETVRN" to a fantasy wonderland of happy peasants and benign, sword-bearing nobles (who will of course be them*): it's idiotic and unrealistic.  We can have fresh vegetables all winter and clean air, global connectivity and clean water, but we're going need to do the hard work of engineering our way to them -- and you can't do that from a feudal culture with most people stuck living like farm animals.  (It took rediscovered science, stolen gold, readily-accessible coal and steam engines last time, and it was centuries in the doing.)
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* Yeah, good luck with that.  Even a cursory reading of history reveals that when the going gets tough, pencil-neck geeks are shoved to the back by the biggest, meanest action-oriented types, sorted for viciousness first, cleverness second and geekery not at all.

Pasta And Sauce, Two Dinners

     Last Sunday, I made pasta: rotini* with marinara sauce from a jar, livened up with mild Italian sausage, a small can of sliced black olives (well-drained) and shishito pepper rings.  It was good -- the spiral rotini hold a lot of sauce.  All of the ingredients except the sauce were things I already had on the shelf on in the fridge.  There was sauce left over, so I froze it.

     On the way home yesterday, I was thinking about what might work for dinner.  I picked up a small onion, three-quarters of a pound of lean ground beef and some Parmesan cheese.

     Once home, I set the frozen leftover sauce to thaw in the microwave, browned the ground beef, drained it, pushed it to the edges of the pan and cooked the diced onion until it was translucent and just starting to brown.  I added a small can of plain tomato sauce and some spices, mostly basil and garlic, stirred it all together and added the mostly-thawed leftover sauce.

     For pasta, I used fregula: tiny, toasted spheres of pasta, that range from dark brown to the usual pale tan.  I put them in a two-cup measure half full of hot water in the microwave and gave it several one-minute runs, watching closely for when it would boil up and stopping the oven before it could boil over.  This trick will half-cook the fregula.  When it was done, the sauce was bubbling well.  I used a little of the starchy pasta water to rinse the tomato sauce can and add to the pan, drained the rest, and stirred in the fregula.

     I went to put the lid on, thought a second, and used the spoon to make a shallow dent in the sauce, then broke an egg in to poach while it finished cooking.  I like eggs pomodoro, and it's a low-effort addition.

     Fifteen minutes latter, dinner was ready -- plain for Tam and with an egg for me, and with Parmesan cheese on top.  The shishito peppers had cooked down nicely, and the onion and black olive got along with them very well.
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* When I was growing up, we called them "scroodles," and they were an exotic foreign side dish, usually served with only butter, salt and pepper on them.  They're really fusilli, but in the U. S. and Canada, they're called rotini -- changed at Ellis Island, I suppose.

Yellow Rice, Pigeon Peas, Chicken

     It's a quick meal, especially if you've got leftover chicken.

     "Yellow Rice" is commonly available as a boxed mix.  Most brands call it "Spanish style," but it appears to have been introduced to the U. S. through Mexican and Southwestern cuisine.  It's often paired with pulses.  Years ago, I found a recipe for yellow rice and pigeon peas that I like -- it can be as simple as mixing the two before cooking.

     Pigeon peas are pulses, cousins to lentils and black-eyed peas.  They have a distinctive flavor, one that pairs well with rice and meat.  So when I happened on a chicken and rice (plus plain green peas) recipe on a box of yellow rice mix that needed to get used, I had a plan.

     Our corner grocer sells whole roasted chickens -- and also ready-to-eat wings, breasts and drumsticks.  By the time I'm off work, they've been in the hot case awhile, which can be good or bad.  Yesterday, they had a nice stack of drumsticks, which was all to the good; Tam's not fond of chicken breast but she loves drumsticks.  I picked up four.  I already had chicken broth, the rice mix and a can of pigeon peas.*

     I used a deep, lidded skillet for the chicken broth (and some of the bean liquid) in place of plain water.  You get it boiling, add the rice mix, bring it back to a boil before covering and simmering over low heat for 25 minutes.  I added the four drumsticks after the dry rice, along with a little paprika, cilantro (the usual caution -- it tastes very soapy to some people and if you don't know, find out before adding it to a dish!) and dried onion flakes, put the lid on and did other things while it cooked.

     The end result was fragrant and flavorful, with tender falling-off-the-bone chicken in a bed of yellow-gold rice and green-to-tan pigeon peas, and looks like a lot more work than it is.

     Fancier versions might start with chicken breasts, fried in the same skillet and then cooked with the rice.
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* Beans and pulses are inexpensive, keep well and offer a variety of flavors.  While dried ones are the longest-lasting, they require more preparation time.  So I tend to keep a little dried and several different kinds in cans.