Okay, I Was Goofing Off

     Wasted the morning looking at videos about steam engines and such.  So I'm out of time.  Um, gee -- politics is still insane, just a mirror-image (more or less) of the preceding eight years.  Meet the new boss, loathed by the press.   Which I see as an advantage: if only more of the press looked to Washington with hostile suspicion no matter which party was in power!  But I'm a dreamer.  We'll take what we get when we get it, and, being Americans, we'll gripe all the while.

Hello -- Wrong Dimension?

     Change sneaks up on us unannounced, sometimes unnoticed.  The gap between seniors and sophomores in my second year of High School, or freshmen and juniors/seniors in my first was exactly the change from the boys in button-down collars (and occasionally ties), the girls in cute outfits and everyone in nice, leather shoes to 80%+ of the kids in jeans, T-shirts and tennis shoes; most of my class and the classes after us moved through school in sloppy comfort, while most of the kids ahead of us "dressed for success."  At the time, we barely noticed, but a glance back through yearbooks -- especially at the "casual" photographs -- shows it.

    I like to think I'm a pretty fair short-order cook and I try to keep up with the changes and trends.  Reverse sear?  Got it.  I've cooked over everything from a wood fire to an induction range; I prefer gas, which puts me squarely in the majority of cooks, both professional and amateur.*  I have used food processors and consider them to be gadgets; even a blender is just a time-saver, not a sea-change (nevertheless, thank you, Fred Waring!),

     But while I was mastering the grilled steak and pan-fried bacon-and-eggs, they have snuck up on me with "sous vide" -- which seems to cook smarter rather than harder -- and the ThermoMix, which appears combine aspects of the mixer, the rice steamer, the electric skillet and the crockpot.  Will they catch on?  Sous vide has been a professional trick since the 18th Century; the clever self-heating mixer, not nearly so long.  They both came at me right out of left field.  Cook what how?  Are bananas blue in this odd new world, or are they still the normal bright orange color?
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* I do note that the chef at Gallery Pastry Shop prefers induction for omelettes and gas for everything else.   This seems sensible.

Breakfast Sandwich

     It turns out that hot corned beef, a little bacon and an egg fried in truffle butter is a combination you would not want to miss.

Decadence: Complete?

     I bought black-truffle butter at the grocer's last night.  They only sell it in small quantities, which is a good thing, as the per-unit price is...well, like truffles: excessive.

     But how often am I going to have such a luxury?  The store hasn't had it in the past (as far as I have noticed) and they may not in the future.  And besides (she said, self-justifyingly), they were out of the good rye bread I usually buy and I had to get relatively plebian whole wheat* instead.

     Tellya what, just a little of that stuff on a bacon-and-egg sandwich is, oh my, so good!

     ...And it's just about morel mushroom time at the local/organic place in my neighborhood.  H'mm, I wonder if just a hint of truffle butter would go well with them?
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* Gosh, I miss Roman Meal.  Haven't seen it in stores around here for years.

"Low Memory" Crashes

     The new computer had them a few days ago, then they stopped.  Came back again late last night, after a delightful Sunday meal -- steaks and big mushrooms grilled over hardwood lump charcoal,* lightly-steamed Brussels sprouts and baked potatoes -- and I must admit, I was too busy digesting to fiddle with it.

     But tonight, I think I'd better open this thing up and see what's going on.  Backlash in the gear trains?  A loose 10's-carrying arm?  A stuck steam valve?  Something.
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* Also hardwood kindling to start the charcoal.  Lighter fluid?  Pfui!  The difference between the good charcoal and the pressed briquettes of my youth is the difference between live music and a scratchy recording.

It's Sunny

     Get up.  Go outdoors.  I plan to -- you should, too.  This week will stay chilly and turn rainy, so I don't intend to waste a sunny day.

     Oh, here's a puzzle: My back yard is infested by Northern Creeper.  Every day, it doubles the area it covers.  If it can cover my whole yard in 48 days, how long would it take to cover half my yard?

     If a rake and a bag to pick all the creeper vines up and throw them away would have totaled $1.10 back in 1924 when Roseholme Cottage was built, and the rake cost a dollar more than the bag, what price was the bag?

     If it takes five rake-making machines five minutes to produce five rakes, how long would it take 100 rake-making machines to make 100 rakes?

     Get all three right and you're Sherlock Holmes.  I managed two off-the-cuff and vaporlocked on one; had to take it step-by-step to see where I went off the rails.

Health-Care Mess

     There was a lot of cheering and hand-wringing the other day, when the U.S. House passed a bill to "repeal and replace" the American Healthcare Act, generally known as "Obamacare," though the actual effect seemed to be to modify one or two parts of it, of this stack of law that runs to thousands of pages.  (Here are two different perspectives, pile'o'paper vs. paperwork-intensive industry.)

     Of course, this thing hasn't reached the U.S. Senate yet, so the bill is still ..."...only a bill...sitting here on Capitol Hill."  Knowing that nothing succeeds like success, the President took a victory lap nonetheless.  It's not a terrible political strategy: Congress has been known to stampede like a herd of cattle.

     Say it passes: healthcare will still be messed up.  Oh, the fed.gov won't fine you for not being able to afford insurance; if you have a pre-existing condition, your state will be able (after some fancy folderol) to shove over to a high-risk pool, where you will be charged more for insurance.  And that's about it, not even enough time for the band to get through a whole verse of Nearer My God To Thee as the lead balloon of Big Federally-Mandated Healthcare goes bumbling onward. Healthcare was messed up before ACA, too.  It's never ideal and it never will be.  The shift from "Major Medical" health insurance that worked like automobile or home insurance to cover major events only, to all-encompassing coverage of "wellness," routine doctor visits, medication, skinned knees and so on is partially responsible.*  It was started as cost-saving move: it's cheaper to prevent heart attacks than to treat them, it's cheaper to find cancer while it is is small and relatively treatable, and so on.  Sure, it is probably better for you -- but that was not, in fact, the point.

     And thus, too, for the various forms of universal health care.  People seize on the things they see as direct benefits and they tend to stick; one side or the other or both uses them as slogans and rallying points, but "free stuff from the government" has a powerful allure, as the media-popular image of a Tea Party protester with a HANDS OFF MY MEDICARE sign from a few years ago made clear.  So don't expect any changes to "fix healthcare."  They make things a little better for the insurance companies; they may remove the most direct and obvious boot-on-the-neck provisions, but in the end?  Same bureaucracy.  Same mess of muddling-though with your health insurance.  Same fight to find "in-network" specialists and the same disparity between you and the guy who can afford to pay for it out of his own pocket -- or a hire an attorney to shovel through his insurance paperwork and get them to pay.
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* The poor and careless have been dying badly at a higher rate than the well-off and careful since time immemorial. Don't expect that to change.

A Sunny Friday?

     Probably no sun today.  There's water in the basement.  Not a lot, but it seeps in through every tiny crack.  Much more rain and I may be having to rig up the pump.

     Generally, the basement is set up to survive a little water on the floor.  We have a dehumidifier, things are largely stored off the floor, and if the rain doesn't go on too long, it works out.  Two or three times, the basement has taken on significant amounts of water, including one sewer back-up nine years ago.   The floor drain with its anti-backflow valve has been replaced since, and the city redid the sewer and storm drains the following year.  But the system is still semi-combined and significant, prolonged rainfall is not without risk.

     So here's hoping for the best and for no more rain for awhile.

Superhero Design, Northern Edition

     Looking around the Web, you can easily find Canadian-themed superheroes; many are generally modeled on Captain America, right down to a maple leaf-themed shield. No, clever artists, totally wrong! His shield should be made of solid rock. ...Kids these days....

A Note To All Politicians:

     "...I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids," does not constitute analysis or explanation for the consequences of your actions.  The last major political figure to coast through with nearly-universal approval was George Washington -- and he only had it for his first term in office.

     Don't be so shocked when it's your turn, politicians. 

Springtime?

     That's what it says on the calendar.  It feels more like Autumn -- chilly, windy and rainy.  But at least there is rain, and, cool though it is, the weather is generally warmer.  The wind has been just about epic -- oh, we've had stronger, but rarely all day long, let alone for days.

     It seems, however, to have sailed me towards better health.  After ending the anti-inflammatory fiasco and returning to a regimen of OTC meds,* I am feeling better than I have felt in quite a long time.  Sunday, I took a long walk (long compared to my recent usual, at least) for the first time in quite awhile.  I still tire easily but things are looking towards looking up. 

     May is not my best month -- loaded with family birthdays (including, after everyone else's, my own, which I dread), always very busy at work, and with the Dayton Hamvention to (maybe) fit in.  Here's hoping it can be a healthy month, anyway.

     Also, once the monsoon has passed, I am so gonna add more flowers out front.
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* An aspirin morning and evening, plus acetaminophen as needed during the day.  Seems to work.

Fortitude

     A few weeks ago, I began watching Fortitude, a British-produced thriller set in a remote Norwegian village with a played-out coal mine, a growing scientific research center, ambitious eco-tourism hopes and an ongoing string of mysterious deaths, many if not all of them murders.

     It could have been a dull and claustrophobic set-piece.  It's marvelously not; instead, it plays like a collaboration between Michael Crichton and H. P. Lovecraft that had been produced by the team that made the first season of True Detective.

     While it has not yet managed quite the intensity of TD, it comes as close as anything I've seen; like the American program, the characters are well-realized, full of very real-seeming conflict and contradiction.  The backstory plays out in a series of partial glimpses, a little more every episode, in a manner at once natural and unnerving.  Eight and a half episodes in, there's plenty of conflict but still no clear sense of who to cheer on and who to hiss at.

     I'm enjoying it.

     ETA, 12 hours later: so I got to the end of the episode and kinda got icked out a couple of times.  But I'm still watching.