Joshua Tree

Death Valley

In addition to the rocks and sky, it’s safe to say the thing i like to photograph most in the desert is creosote bush. The leaves seem to stay green all winter and the bark is blue/gray/white, and striking in the evening. Some highlights from the trip included seeing a fox at the texas spring campsite in death valley, getting to do plenty of star gazing, soaking in hot tubs, and only getting sunburned a couple of times.

⌘-spacebar:  opens spotlight, apple’s integrated search engine.

i find this method of finding and running, say Terminal.app, much faster and easier than rooting around in the Finder > Applications > Who Knows if the app in question isn’t already in the dock. Just hit command-space, start typing terminal and hit enter after a couple of characters. now you can keep your dock squeaky clean, just like mine, without losing the ability to run applications :)

really, it’s not much different from the Start Search text box in Window Vista’s start menu. But it’s fun, it works, and it makes me happy.

last week sometime: Potato leek soup - made from two gigantous but diminishing leeks in the cripser and the softest 4 potatoes in the drawer. i should have known something was amiss when the recipe didn’t call for cream, but it could have been worse. Also, slicing and washing leeks is surprisingly fun.

today: turnips - peeled, sliced up in 3″ lengths, tossed in olive oil and baked for “1-2 hours” (what an awesome recipe). I’ll let you know how they turn out.

saturday: apple crisp

I used up all the apples (probably about 8) but wish i’d used less sugar than the recipe called for (1 C white and 1 C brown) and had used oatmeal instead of just flour.

monday: greens w/ rice with roast beets

surprisingly i didn’t botch the greens even though i ad hocked the recipe: cut them up nice and small and sauteed them with garlic and olive oil. salt and pepper to taste and it worked great. i stuck the beets in the oven at 350° for an hour after coating them in olive oil and sprinkling with salt. not bad either.

tuesday: squash risotto with roast kale

sean and eirin came over and brought their entire pantry with them: (or at least it would have been my entire pantry if i’d brought it over to their place) quinoa, arborio rice, rice wine, red wine, leeks, a cookbook, and probably something else i’m forgetting. in any case, i barely made a dent in the squash i was trying to use up, but luckily it was mighty tasty. and nice and gluey - not the aldente risotto i’m afraid of getting in restaurants

next up:

the rest of the squash, some pears, and some turnips…

these kind of suck. also, if you’re going to release themes, make sure they work across all your products (google reader). also, better to have 3 really awesome themes (or at least really differentiated) than 31 mediocre ones. at the time i was pretty sure i liked the original default better than the new default. now i’m using the new default because i tried it out to see if i could get used to it and i’m too lazy to change it back. anyway, i couldn’t help but smile when i saw this:

http://helvetireader.com/

not quite right, unfortunately, but not quite wrong either ;)

today el left for minneapolis, so i ran some errands (read: went to IKEA). i’ve been subscribing to too many design blogs recently, because i’ve returned to my strong appreciation for ultra contemporary/modernist style. the other day when i couldn’t shut up about netflix, dave said something along the lines of “you have a pretty nice setup don’t you?” well, i’d always thought so, but the $12 TV stand from Goodwill wasn’t quite cutting it in the living room, (although we were totally attached to it) so i opted for something low, wide, and incredibly simple. and i like it…

this is the worst picture ever for showing the bookshelf. but what are you going to do. it’s one of these. almost got the exedit one, but the shelves are dinky. this is nice because they’re nice and fat. see the difference?

so there it is. i think we’ve finally finished buying furniture… because there’s just no more room to put anything else.

1. pour fist sized pile of cheez-its onto piece of paper in front of keyboard
2. pick up a single cheez-it and insert into mouth, salt side down
3. slowly close mouth, holding cheez-it against roof of mouth with tongue
4. over time, as cheez-it becomes moist, increase pressure on roof of mouth
5. continue squeezing cheez-it until it’s pulverized
6. swallow remains and prepare for next cheez-it

E and I made the journey to portland via train this year. i remember when we decided to take it. we were on I-5, driving back from portland after the STP, and I was thinking, “this is ridiculous. how much money does it cost to a) not get in a car accident b) not have to stop the car to go to the bathroom c) be able to read uninterrupted for 3+ hours d) drink out of a flask?” except i hadn’t put together the flask part yet.

anyway we took the train. only two downsides were: the really smelly woman sitting behind us, and the fact that we didn’t have awesome seats on the way back. but besides that? bliss. what a dignified way to travel. now if only amtrak didn’t have to wait for freight trains, etc., then we’d be in serious business. power outlets by every leather seat? awesome.

in any case, last year, the fishes had everyone speak up and say what they were thankful for. i started thinking about it a bit early this year just in case. maybe not as colorful as in the past, but here’s what’s been on my mind:

thanks for loved ones
thanks for the outcome of the last election
thanks that i’m safe and sound

I’ve been reading a lot on the proposed ‘big 3′ bailouts. i’m definitely in favor of the bankruptcy route, for the record, but here are some interesting tidbits i read last week:

On Sunday, President-elect Barack Obama asked, “What does a sustainable U.S. auto industry look like?”

Well, it looks a lot like the automotive industry run by “foreign” car companies that insource jobs into the U.S. In 2006 these foreign auto makers (multinational auto or auto-parts companies that are headquartered outside of the U.S.) employed 402,800 Americans. The average annual compensation for these employees was $63,538.

(From Matthew Slaughter’s editorial)

And from Mitt Romney (who knew?)

That extra burden is estimated to be more than $2,000 per car. Think what that means: Ford, for example, needs to cut $2,000 worth of features and quality out of its Taurus to compete with Toyota’s Avalon. Of course the Avalon feels like a better product — it has $2,000 more put into it. Considering this disadvantage, Detroit has done a remarkable job of designing and engineering its cars. But if this cost penalty persists, any bailout will only delay the inevitable.

Last weekend, we went back there, under the pretense of studying. I found us a schweet coffee shop w/ urban spoon, but we didn’t realize there’d be kids, so we opted for a Vérité (local coffee/cupcake chain) instead. I got some economists/wireds read, and who knows what E accomplished. we didn’t stay there late enough to get afternoon/evening sun, really, but I got some nice pictures in any case: