Category Archives: Personal Blog

Entries from my personal journal

Personal Blog

Books!

These posts are really more for my own reference than anything, but I figure it’s good to share them all the same.  Here’s a bunch of books that I’ve chewed through recently.

East of Eden – is this my first Steinbeck ?  It might be!  I’m glad I read it now, though, since I’ve lived in California a bit and have a much better mental context for the setting.  It was exciting when Nick and I took the train to San Francisco and passed Salinas.  The character of Cathy Ames was so horrifying, though, that I almost ended the book prematurely.  I stuck it through!

The Snow Fox – sometimes when I don’t have any ideas of the next book I should read, I wander the aisles of the library and randomly pluck out titles, then try the first one that has a blurb of interest to me.  This book was a love story between a samurai and a poet in medieval Japan, and had wonderful imagery.  They did some playing around with time jumps, though, so occasionally I wasn’t sure when I was reading, but the story was nice, if not somewhat melancholy.

Cat’s Cradle – I usually have a really hard time with Vonnegut, but I really enjoyed this one.  The whole Bokononism thing was really fun, and a clever lens through which to interpret the world

Trickster Makes this World – I was actually kind of disappointed by this book.  I am really interested in trickster stories and was hoping to learn more about their origins and their relations to each other across cultures.  There was some of that, but he would get so swirling and deep and metaphysical about the interpretations of just a few key trickster stories that they felt worn out and uninteresting by the end of it.  Pretty “meh,” and I probably should have just stuck to reading actual trickster tales.

To Kill a Mockingbird – another classic story that I realize I’d never read.  This book is wonderful, but it’s also pretty depressing to see that many of the uglier aspects of how human beings treat each other still go on today.  Sigh

Neverwhere – I generally enjoy Neil Gaiman but just had never gotten around to reading this one.  It was awesome.  I liked it.

Magic Street – I always think I’ve read more Orson Scott Card than I actually have.  I always think I’ve read Ender’s Game when it was really The Worthing Saga that I read.  Anyway.  I love fantasy books that spin on the traditional Tolkein-inspired notions of fantasty, and this story is a prime example.  Highly recommended!

As always, if you have a good read to suggest, please do so!

Personal Blog

February Free Event

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This month’s free event was a Nature Photography Workshop at Franklin Canyon, which is a little nature preserve snugged away in the middle of Beverly Hills that I had no idea existed.  The local canyon parks have various hikes and workshops every month, and they always catch my eye as I scan EyeSpyLA for free events. 

It was a pretty casual arrangement.  Basically one of the park’s volunteer naturalists led the group on a trail and gave tips here and there.  She also worked with people individually to help them learn how to use their cameras.  I was able to finally get some guidance on taking distant shots and landscapes to some success, but man I’m starting to crave a zoom lens!

Anyway, it was super fun and I’m really glad I went.  Here are the results from the day:

https://picasaweb.google.com/102954115822334585421/FranklinCanyon2012

With a few favorites:

Anyone recognize this place?

Looking ahead to March, I most definitely want to return to the Annual Festival of the Kite.  Still, I’ll keep an eye out for any other interesting events that show up.

Personal Blog

January Free Thing Recap

I did two free events in LA in January, and both were pretty neat.  The first was a free pipe organ concert by Hector Olivera.  Unlike many other musical concerts, for a pipe organ concert you have to go to where the pipe organ is, and seeing as pipe organs are generally in churches in the choir loft and the pews face the opposite direction, there was that awkwardness of sitting facing away from the performer.  The first half was just stuff on the pipe organ and it was super cool.  For the second half, he performed on his symphonic touring organ, which is the kind that has synthesizers for all the other instruments in the symphony.  While technically impressive to watch him hammer out all the instrument parts himself, unfortunately symphonic organs just don’t sound very good.  It’s like listening to a midi keyboard.  Nevertheless, the performance was good, and free, and they had homemade baked goods as refreshments, score!

The second event was a workshop given by graffiti artist, Galo “MAKE ONE” Canote.  It’s part of  a program by the Craft and Folk Art Museum called “Folk Art Everywhere,” which has various workshops held in different cultural centers all throughout LA.  He gave us a lecture about his work and LA street culture, then had a workshop on very basic lettering, showing us the most basic way to deform letters without losing their inherent structure, and we all practiced lettering our names with markers on papers.  Basically it was “How to make a locker sign.” It was cool, though, and I learned some things for sure.  As a bonus, everyone who came was given free passes for the Craft and Folk Art Museum. 

February Free Events that look promising:

  • Nature photography workshop at Franklin Canyon
  • Astronomy walk at the observatory
  • Staged reading of Sophocles’ Ajax

We’ll see what other events pop up

Personal Blog

Poached Chicken and Stuffed Turnip

 

This is a weird recipe.  I was trying to mod an existing Poule au Pot recipe based on the ingredients I already had, which were chicken parts instead of a whole chicken (and different veggies and no pasta).  I wanted stuffing, though, so I looked for something else I could mount it in, and happened to have a turnip, so there you go.

For the Stuffing, mix together in a bowl:

  • 1 cup or so of breadcrumbs.  I didn’t measure exactly, just grated a leftover third of stale baguette I happened to have
  • 1 shallot, finely chopped
  • 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
  • 1 TBS melted butter
  • salt and pepper
  • handful of fresh dill, finely chopped
  • 1/2 cup chicken stock

Gather together in cheesecloth:

  • 1 whole shallot with 2 cloves shoved into the sides
  • 1 bay leaf
  • a few sprigs of fresh thyme
  • a few stems of fresh parsley
  • 1 rib celery, cut into chunks

Take:

  • 1 large turnip

cut off the root end and the top (keep the top).  Cut out the center of the turnip and set aside for later.  I sort of worked my way around the turnip with a knife, cut an x cross-ways, then used a spoon to dig out chunks.  I repeated this until I had an empty turnip casing.

Fill the turnip with stuffing, put the lid back on and tie around the turnip with kitchen twine to keep it shut.

Season with salt and pepper:

  • 1 chicken thigh and leg
  • 1 chicken wing

Add the chicken, cheesecloth bundle, and turnip to a large saucepan or pot and fill with water until the chicken is just covered.  Cover the pot and bring to a boil, then uncover and simmer 10-15 minutes, skimming the fat, reducing the broth.

(this is where I messed up somewhat.  I was trying to figure out the difference in poaching time between chicken parts and a whole bird, and I think I ended up simmering for too long or at too high a temperature, because the chicken was kind of mild.  I may have leeched out the flavor like you do when you make stock.  More experiments needed)

Add to the pot:

  • 1 leek, halved and cut into 4 inch pieces
  • The turnip innards from before

Add water if needed to keep the chicken covered and continue simmering until the veggies are tender and the chicken is done (165 degree F internal temp).

Remove chicken and turnip and strain vegetables.  Take the lid off the turnip and serve everything together.

Personal Blog

2011 Review

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– This year included a lot of adventuring around LA, what with my do-one-free-thing-in-LA-each month goal.  I definitely discovered some fantastic local festivals that I want to attend again, like the Kite festival and Shakespeare in Griffith Park.  It got me on the metro and around the city more, and I feel a little more informed about this place because of it.

– This was also like the year of e-sports for me.  Spurred on by my enthusiasm from last year’s Blizzcon, I got very involved in watching the NASL matches, staying up late with Nick to watch GSL finals, watching MLG events, and going to some tournaments (NASL finals for seasons 1 and 2, MLG Anaheim, and Blizzcon).  It has been great fun, if not incredibly nerdy.

– On the game development front, Resistance 3 shipped this year!  My first grown-up-game-designer cred!  Hooray!  I also started writing for Mike Acton’s blog, #AltDevBlogADay, which has been really fun and successful.  Indiecade this year was once again thwarted by sickness, alas!  But I did do a games-related podcast this year, and was a guest speaker via Google Hangout for a college game design club.

– I managed to go the entire year without a visit back to Kentucky until Christmastime, and I nearly went crazy from homesickness.  It’s amazing to me how recharging I find Kentucky.  As soon as I set foot outside the airport, I feel its energy rushing up through me, and I always leave feeling refreshed and renewed.  So, for my health, I’ll be making some extra visits in 2012.

– Unfortunately, 2011 is winding to a close on a very sickly note.  Poor Nick got terribly sick when he got to Kentucky, and since returning to LA I’ve been nursing him, so no extravagant New Year’s Eve party for us.  Eh, no matter, I’m in a low-key sort of mood anyway.

In general, 2011 has been very straightforward, “business as usual.”  Lots of cooking, cat-walking, starcraft-watching, game-making, and other such common day-to-day activities in my life.  It felt hearty, like I got a lot of sustained mental nutrition out of the year, if that makes any sense.  Anyway, I’m looking forward to what 2012 will bring, and hoping that one thing will be less sickly-times for my boyfriend.  Onward!

Personal Blog

On Efficiency

Recently I started having thoughts about how to limit my futzing-around-on-the-internet time in order to allocate it to more productive ventures.  I do spend a lot of time browsing around, consuming random articles about random topics, reading facebook and the like.  However, in the middle of my efficiency plottings, I realized that I’ve tried this plan twice before already.

The first time was back in college, when I spent a lot of downtime reading Livejournal and participating in various forums.  One year for Lent I decided to give up non-school-related internet activity, with the intention of using all the freed up time on all kinds of wonderful personal projects.  A cunning plan that surely could not fail!  So, when Ash Wednesday came and my habitual forum-browsing time arrived, what did I do?  I took a nap.  And that’s how it rolled for the whole time.  All the time I saved by giving up those internet ventures went straight into sleep.

Several years later, after college, I had a similar scenario turn up.  It was during my World of Warcraft prime, when that game consumed up vast amounts of my free time, that I at some point decided to limit myself in WoW so I could work on more productive personal projects.  Again, I stayed true to my promise and strictly limited my time, but all that was freed up was quickly consumed again by sleep.  Naps galore.

So I can only assume that the same thing will happen again.  Is it my body’s way of demanding a certain amount of downtime from me?  When I go into overachiever mode, it just counters by inducing sleep?  Or is it some test or obstacle that I just haven’t overcome yet?  Afterall, time is the one true currency.  Am I wasting it?

When I give it some honest thought, I don’t ever feel guilty about the time I spend not-being-productive.  I have no regrets about all those hours playing WoW, and in spite of my growing list of Someday/Maybe projects, I don’t feel like I’m missing out on something by not getting down to them.  In fact, I’m rather content and happy with things right now, so maybe this is just something I need to shrug off.

Personal Blog

Goal Progress Report

So my intention to report on my goal progress really fell apart at the end of the year, but whatever.  Next year I’ll know that a strict goal-reporting requirement doesn’t work for me 🙂  Anyway, here is my last update on how I did with my goals this year.

1) Financial.  I’m happy to say that I’ve completed 3 big steps for my financial goals this year.  I paid off my smaller private student loan, and then I shifted gears and decided to bolster my emergency fund up to 3 months before returning to work on the big federal loan.  This I have succeeded in doing!  Finally today, after about a year of laziness and then a month or two of getting everything in order, I closed my Bank of America account and moved all my money dealings over to a credit union.  In 2012 it will be time to attack the rest of the student loans full-force, and my new goal will be to get it paid off before Christmas of 2014.

2) Free Thing in LA every month.  This sort of waned off towards the end of the year, too, since everyone is so busy with holiday events (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas…).  Some of the latest attempts at adventure didn’t end up panning out (The Victorian Advent Fair was more of a small neighborhood community thing, for example) but whatevs.  I still think I did an enormous amount of exploring of Los Angeles this past year due to my free outings, and some of them were a huge hit.  I’ll definitely be returning to the Kite Festival, for example, and Shakespeare in the Park.  Keep your eyes on your facebook events next year, LA friends, and I will try and keep digging up interesting events!  Special thanks to Eye Spy LA’s free section, from which I get most of my inspiration.

3) Games.  This is another one that waned pretty quickly on its specificity, but I still feel like I did a good job of spending time with new and different games this year.  Since my last update, there has been Dragon Age: Origins, Uncharted 3, Driver: San Francisco, TripleTown, Trine, Spacechem, Innercube, and so on and so forth.  I do have on my list to get my hands on Batman: Arkham City, Skyward Sword, and Rayman Origins soon.  We’ll see.

4) Sewing.  Again, even though I accomplished my 3 things, I still have done a fair amount of mending and sewing stuff this year, keeping the sewing machine oiled and in use.  My latest project was cobbling together some thriftstore clothes to make my wild-west costume dress for our Christmas party.

In closing, I think my goals-for-the-year experiment turned out more or less a success.  Some of these things, like the free LA events and the sewing, I hope to turn into habits.  Stay tuned for 2012 wherein I think up some new and exciting year-long goals!

Personal Blog

Vegetable Soup Recipe

I’m not sure this counts as a true recipe so much as an example of “let’s just throw everything I happen to have in the kitchen into a pot and see what happens.”  I am feeling under the weather today and so thought I’d make some soup for myself.

Ingredients

  • olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 bell pepper, cored, seeded and chopped
  • 1 winter squash, peeeled and chopped into cubes
  • 3 small turnips, peeled and chopped
  • 1 yukon potato, peeled and chopped
  • 1 granny smith apple, peeled and chopped
  • 4 cups of vegetable stock or chicken stock or water or any combination thereof
  • bundle of random dried herbs (I had some from my CSA in a bundle but I couldn’t identify all the herbs, I think maybe sage was in there somewhere)
  • salt and pepper
  • spices to your liking (I used some ground ginger to good effect)

1. Heat the oil in a large pot and cook the onion, garlic, and pepper until fragrant, a few minutes.

2. Add all the other vegetables and cook for a few minutes, stirring

3. Add stock and herb bundle.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the vegetables are tender.

4. Remove from heat.  Remove the herb bundle. Transfer about a cup full of vegetables to a blender or food processor and puree, then return to the pot (leave the other veggies in chunk form for texture)

5. Add salt, pepper, and spices to taste.  Heat through and serve.

Personal Blog

Pomegranate Apple Sauce

There was a request for the recipe for my pomegranate apple sauce, so here it is!

  • 3-4 apples, peeled, cored, cut into chunks
  • 1 pomegranate’s worth of seeds (youtube will help you with the optimal way to open a pomegranate)
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar

Add apple chunks and pomegranate seeds to a medium saucepan.  Mix together sugar and water and add to saucepan.  Bring to a boil, lower heat and cover, let simmer for about 20 minutes.  Remove cover and simmer 20 minutes more, until most of the water has reduced.  Mash up the apples with a spoon.  Done!

As for the honey cornmeal pancakes, I just used this recipe (sans syrup.  I used some plum preserves and then spread the applesauce onto them):

http://www.honey.com/nhb/recipes/recipe-details?RecipeID=647

Personal Blog

Thoughts On the Train

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Nick and I decided to take the train up to San Francisco just for the hell of it, because neither of us had been on a proper Amtrack ride before. It was really, REALLY nice. Perhaps you are wondering if you should try out the train on your next traveling adventure instead of flying and driving. Here are some observations that may help you decide.

First, if time is a luxury for you and you aren’t in any hurry, then I’d say go for it! Certainly if you are on a tight schedule it would be way more convenient and not much more expensive to fly from LA to San Francisco (and we are flying back so we didn’t have to take an extra day), but the time it takes is really the only downside to the train. Fortunately, if you aren’t on a schedule and aren’t in a hurry, there are plenty of things to do to fill up that time. Also, there’s no “get there an hour early and suffer through security” that eats up that time. The train shows up at the stop, you give your ticket and get on. Boom, done.

The seats on the train are comfortable and have a million miles of legroom. There are no rules about bags having to be stored overhead, so you can just sprawl your stuff out at your seat (and if you’re short like me and can’t actually reach the footrest in front of you, it’s nice to be able to use your bags as one instead). There are power outlets at every seat. You can get up and wander around at any time. The windows are large and the views are pretty, and it took me back to memories of being little and staring out the car window on any car ride, absorbing the landscape.

In the lounge car, they have even more gigantic windows and seats facing directly out, in case you are into the sightseeing part. They also have big booth tables and free wi-fi, and several people were just at these tables working away on laptops. One lady had even brought her scrapbooking project, and had her crafts spread out on the table. I think she was working on it for most of the train ride. Nick and I spent several hours at one of the lounge tables playing Magic: The Gathering.

The lounge car also has snacks that you can purchase, and either eat there or take back to your seats to eat. The diner car had some decent food, but that’s the only other negative about riding the train – since space is scarce, if you have a party of less than 4, they will seat strangers together to fill up the booths. There is nothing I hate quite so much as awkward socialization with strangers when I’m trying to eat, but if you are an extrovert then this could be really exciting for you.

So, in spite of it being an 11 hour ride, I spent that time napping, gazing, playing Minecraft, Spacechem, Poker Night at the Inventory, playing Magic with Nick, watching a movie, and so on. It was no different than having a particularly lazy day at home, except there was no Mr. Davis to snuggle. When we got to San Francisco at 10:00 at night, I didn’t feel exhausted the way I normally do after even the shortest of flights.

In conclusion, if you’ve never been on an Amtrak trip, and you have some time to kill and are in no hurry, and perhaps have many personal projects that you’d like to get some work done on, then yes, try it out at least once!