Ambivalence – again

Last time I wrote about ambivalence it was literally about life and death, with international import. This topic has less gravitas, but shows my propensity for seeing the world in shades of gray.

This morning, my favorite radio station announced an impending format change. To say that radio has played a serious part of my life is an understatement. Ask Phil Thompson. While I have found radio stations to listen to, I have never found one that I have really liked so much until moving to Pittsburgh. This station has literally changed my life. I have been a long time NPR listener, and sometimes NPR member. I have lived in larger and smaller markets than Pittsburgh with NPR news stations of which I have been a regular listener, particularly WAMC out of Albany, and KUNI out of Cedar Rapids. While I don’t listen to news ALL day, it’s been nice to know where to find it. I have also been enamored of some local talk programming that isn’t of the Rush Limbaugh persuasion, if you know what I mean. I particularly enjoyed the WAMC conversations with Gov Mario Cuomo. Those were the good old days.

When I moved to Pittsburgh (can it really be 13 years ago this summer), I naturally gravitated towards the local NPR station. I was initially a little annoyed that there wasn’t and NPR only station, but WQED offered more than other local public radio stations. The amount they offered was enough for me, for the most part. And they had this other major programming thrust. Their old slogan “Hot News, Cool Jazz” summed it up quite nicely, even though they have hardly ever been limited to one jazz milieu.

As I began to listen to this station a funny thing happened to me. I’d listen to the news, and then the Jazz would start. Knowing there was no other station that I wanted to listen to, in this Pop or Classic Rock dominated market, I’d hang around on this station. There is in fact another station here that I like quite a lot – WYEP. But there are reception problems with them. Anyway, I began to be infected with this Jazz thing. I had always enjoyed Jazz a little. But I didn’t know it very well. After 13 years of a News/Jazz radio diet, I can proudly say that I am a Jazz listener - not an aficionado, by any means, but a solid listener. So much so, that I have lost a little touch with what is going on in other contemporary genres. Peter West would be sad, but he always knew I wasn’t as avid a music listener as he.

So, Duquesne University is selling WDUQ to a consortium, partially owned by WYEP. This is good news/bad news. I stopped becoming a donor a few years back when the Catholic Duquesne University made WDUQ return a sponsorship donation from Planned Parenthood. Not that I have anythign against the catholic church. I understand that this is the church's stance, if not those of many of their members. I just don't agree, and have witheld my funds. So now maybe I will become a member again. We’ll see.

There is more good news/bad news, as the new ownership group announced programming changes. They are changing WDUQ over to an NPR/Talk format. They say they will keep, and actually increase their jazz programming, but it will be on-line and on HD Radio. No broadcast jazz. So I should be happy right? Well I am. I will be happy to have more NPR/News offerings. But I am also sad. I really like WDUQ’s jazz programming. Now I won’t be able to listen to it in the car, or on my work radio. I am not sure if I will overcome the hurdle of new distribution to continue to listen to jazz the way I have.

Growth is not always easy, even if it is for the better.

Floor taping fun

E-mail (almost) zero

A little later than last summer, but it still feels good.

mon petit chou?

It's a little hard to tell from the picture, because it's a closeup. But this is one of the smallest cabbages I have ever seen. A little larger than a softball. It came in our CSA box yesterday. Now we'll have to look up some more cabbage recipes. Got a favorite?

Our CSA - Excess Spinach

At the risk or turning my blog into a recipe blog, here's another way of dealing with excess CSA spinach, recipe courtesy of SimplyRecipes.com (we altered it slightly, but kep to the gist of this:

Potato Spinach Sausage Casserole

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 Tablespoons unsalted butter, plus extra to grease the baking dish
  
• 2 teaspoons of olive oil
  
• 8 oz fresh spinach, washed, dried, and stemmed
  
• 1/2 lb of Italian sausage (we like 1/2 sweet and 1/2 hot Italian sausage), broken out of casing into small pieces
  
• 1 large red onion (about 3/4 lb), peeled and sliced thin
  
• 1 small garlic clove, minced
  
• 1 1/2 pounds russet potatoes (about 3 medium sized potatoes), peeled and cut into 1-inch chuncks
  
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
  
• 2 Tablespoons chicken broth
  
• 1 Tablespoon cider vinegar
  
• Dash of nutmeg
  
• 3/8 teaspoon of salt
  
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  
• 1 cup of shredded Gruyere or Swiss cheese

Method

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Butter a 6x9 or 8x8 inch baking dish.
   
   
2. Heat one of the teaspoons of olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add spinach and cook, stirring often, until wilted, about 3 minutes. Transfer spinach to strainer and drain. When cool, squeeze out liquid and roughly chop the spinach.
   
   
3. Wipe skillet clean. Add sausage to skillet and cook over medium-high heat until browned, 5 to 6 minutes. Use slotted spoon to transfer sausage to bowl. Wipe skillet clean. Heat remaining oil in skillet and add onions, cooking until golden, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Scrape mixture into bowl with sausage.
   
   
4. Meanwhile, place potatoes in a large pot and add enough water to cover by 1 inch. Bring potatoes to boil over high heat, then lower heat to a simmer. Cook until potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes. Drain potatoes, wipe pot dry, put potatoes back into the pot, and mash with butter, cream, broth, vinegar, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Stir in spinach and 1/2 cup of the cheese.
   
   
5. Transfer potato-spinach mixture to prepared baking dish. Top with sausage-onion mixture and sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup of cheese. Bake until potatoes are very hot and cheese is golden and bubbly, 20 to 25 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Serves 4.

It's Garlic Scape season again.

Yep, last year when we got Garlic Scapes in our vegetable box, we were stumped as to what they were. Then we sautéed them in with some other veg and chicken, and they were tasty. This year I found a few recipes for Garlic Scape Pesto.

Following is a recipe altered to fit what I actually did with the ingredients (slight mod's on several of the recipes I read). I made the pesto, then sautéed some chicken and longer pieces of garlic scape, and mixed it all up with some angel hair.

Mmmm mmmm.

Garlic Scape Pesto

Ingredients:

• 1 cup garlic scapes (about 8 or 9 scapes), top flowery part removed, cut into 1-inch slices
• 1/3 cup toasted pine nuts
• ¾ cup olive oil
• ½ - 3/4 cup grated parmigiano
• ½ teaspoon salt
• black pepper to taste
  

Method:
Place scapes and pine nuts in the bowl of a food processor and whiz until well combined and somewhat smooth. Slowly drizzle in oil and process until integrated. With a rubber spatula, scoop pesto out of bowl and into a mixing bowl. Add parmigiano to taste; add salt and pepper. Makes about 6 ounces of pesto. Keeps for up to one week in an air-tight container in the refrigerator.

For ½ pound short pasta such as penne, add about 2 tablespoons of pesto to cooked pasta and stir until pasta is well coated.

Behind the scenes at the Inaugural Parade

This is a video created by a fellow member of USA local 829, of his experiences participating in the inaugural parade These images completely mirror my experience there. Thanks Phil!

Northern suburbs well represented at inauguration

David Holcomb, of Ben Avon, marched in the inaugural parade as part of a 200-member American Workers Contingent.

"There was something great about walking past the reviewing stand and waving at the Bidens and the Obamas and having them wave back," he said.
"I thought the stand would be elevated and at a distance, but they were all right down close to the street ... and it was really touching."

Mr. Holcomb is production manager at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Drama and participated as a member of United Scenic Artists union, Local 829.

Traveling by bus from the Pentagon staging area to the start of the parade route took him and his fellow marchers through part of a crowd that filled the length of the National Mall between the Capitol and the Washington Monument.

"There is this one little street that goes through the middle of the mall, and we were crossing it just as Obama was taking the oath of office. We looked out and there were thousands and thousands and thousands of people gathered for the event and it was breathtaking."

Mr. Holcomb also was impressed by the instant comradeship among the marchers in his group. "I went down there not knowing a soul and met up with a wonderful group of people who were all there for the same reasons: to share in the moment and the history and the excitement."

Full article from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette

I guess it’s pepper season

Last week's vegetable box had more peppers than we could eat, and this weeks has even more. I like peppers, so we will do our best. But I could use a little pepper identification help. The one on the right is obviously a bell pepper. We got some of those last week. The one second from the left is a banana pepper, which we also got last week, and it has some good heat to it. How do I tell what the heck the other 4 are?

Time to search out some more pepper recipes. Oh well that's half the fun of the vegetable box: making new things. So far this summer, along with a variety of grilled veggies, we have made the following which were new for us:

• Kohlrabi – we liked it roasted best
• Beets & Beet greens
• Garlic Scape – lovely tossed with pasta, veggies and a light lemon sauce.
• Stuffed Cabbage

All in all, the Veggie box is fun, and good for us. We are enjoying it. Now what are those peppers?

Stegosaurus in da ‘burbs?

Yep, that's our very own Stegosaurus, stalking our front garden. I am kind of ashamed to admit that a part of our front garden is this weedy and/or bare. But well, we've been concentrating on other things this summer. We think he makes a nice addition to an otherwise bare spot, formerly inhabited by a very pokey bush that we never liked anyway.

You see in the summer these High School students come to our school for a 6-week intensive "taste of freshman year in a drama conservatory" program. They take classes, do homework, and have fun as well I hear. One of my colleagues has a project that he does in his stagecraft class where they assemble oversize dinosaur skeleton models. You've seen em before. They're usually 1-2 feet tall, made out of balsa wood. In this case they are made out of ¾" pressure-treated plywood, which has been cut out on our CNC Router. They tend to be a little taller than the balsa wood models. Anyway, it's a great project, which builds construction, collaboration, and even nascent critical path awareness. Plus we get to show off the cool CNC Router, and begin to give a feeling for what can be done with it.

This year we had several orphaned dinos at the end of the program - high school student from far away, big dinosaur, mounting airline baggage fees, you get the picture. Anyway, as we were finishing off the summer program, one of the Stegosaurs needed a home, and we were happy to oblige.

Also See Tanbi's own blog post about the Dino project: I CAN HAS DYNASAAR - 2008

Eating (very) Locally in MA

So, you may recall from earlier posts that Mrs. Bob and I are trying the "eating local" thing. Here we are visiting my ancestral home in the Berkshires. For a change (recently) we happen to be here, when the blueberry crop is in. On Wednesday, between rainstorms, we all went out and picked berries. We got about 3 quarts before everyone was to tired to reach the berries that were still ripe. These are the smaller tart blueberries that grow wild, as opposed to the big mushy ones that are more readily available in most grocery stores.

We had so many; I was inspired to make a blueberry pie. I don't believe I have EVER made a blueberry pie, though I have certainly enjoyed my fair share in my life. We didn't have a readily available Fannie Farmer cookbook, so I did the next best thing. I jumped on-line, and found this blog cum recipe. I followed the recipes generally. For the crust, I used a whole stick of butter flavored Crisco and 2.5 cups of flour. It came out great. For the filling I used a little more than a quart of blueberries, cause I had a deep pan. I also only used 2/3 of the requested sugar, and a little more than a tablespoon of lemon (maybe 2). The pie came out deliciously slightly tart, which balanced with the buttery taste of the crust beautifully. I braved making a lattice crust, which was fun, if a little thick and slightly indelicate.

You can see in the photos that I was enjoying a little of the post-dinner Pinot Noir, while making the pie. You can also see that I plated the pie with a couple slices each of some wonderful cheeses from Rubiner's in Great Barrington. The lechevrot was my favorite of the two cheeses the previous night, served on a baguette. However, the Bonnema State Boerenkaas paired better with the pie. In either case who ever heard of a cheesemonger? Great Barrington may well have become more hoity toity than before, but I am certainly enjoying the results of that.

What to do when it rains in western Massachusetts

We've been in the Berkshires for two days now, and apart from the rains it's been lovely. With two children under 10 in the small house, we have been looking for other cabin-fever beating activities. Today several of us drove to my mother's house to pick up some things we needed. While we were in that neck of the woods, we brought the kids to the Magic Wings butterfly conservatory in South Deerfield, MA.

There were a TON of butterflies. We had a fun time being both indoors and not cooped up in the house, and trying to photograph the butterflies. The camera had a hard time focusing on them, and they had a habit of flitting about. Following are the best I could do.

Vacation Stop #2 – Plimoth Plantation

Did you miss stop number 1? Oh yeah, we packed the family into the car for the 11 hour ride from Pittsburgh to Woods Hole. We didn't take any pictures there, because we have been so many times, there was not too much new to shoot. We were too busy enjoying the ocean and our friends to bother with taking photographs. You'll have to be content with my profile photo which was taken last year in Woods Hole.

So what was stop #2 already? Plimoth Plantation. It's a living museum, with an English settlement a la 1627, and a Native American village of the same vintage, both with re-enactors. I haven't been to there since I was 8 years old or younger, but it all came rushing back to me like it was yesterday. It was a lot of fun, and the progeny and spouse enjoyed it greatly, as did the Woods Hole friends who joined us, even though their 4-year old was a little jaded by the whole affair. Big fun and we were off to the ancestral homeland in the Berkshires. Enjoy the Plimoth pics, and I'll post more soon.

You are supposed to READ the owners manual?

Mrs. Bob has a Chrysler PT Cruiser. It's cute, but after 3 years, the bloom is off the rose. It's not the best car either of us has ever owned. But it's not the worst either, I suppose.

Well, today we switched cars, because she needed my larger vehicle for something. I go out to get in her car…turn the key… it starts up…runs for a few seconds..dies. It does this several times, and then won't even turn over. I am fuming at this point, because I am supposed to be at work pretty soon. Grrr. She comes home from a morning appointment, picks me up and drives me to work, thereby wasting some of her morning.

Flash back a month or so, when this happened to me last time. Mrs. Bob and our daughter went away for the weekend with my car, leaving me with hers. I drove it to Home Depot Saturday morning to pick up some supplies, and the same exact thing happened to me there. That day I ended up walking the 3 miles up and over the very high hill back to the house, carrying my tool bag.

Don't we get home tonight, and I try it again…same thing. Mrs. Bob jumps in the car to try it, though I am sure nothing will happen. Whadaya know, it starts right up. We look at each other incredulously. I give her my key. She tries it and replicates my experience. Back and forth with her key and mine, starting and not starting. We go in the house, shaking our heads in disbelief. I grab the Owner's Manual on the way in, and here's what it says:

Hmph. Who'd have expected that in a krappy, cheap, PT cruiser? Anyone want a PT Cruiser key? The one on the left is available.

Groceries Delivered – woo hoo.

Last summer some neighbors told us about this farm subscription that they had, providing them with fresh local produce weekly. We had just begun to hear of the Pittsburgh Slow Food movement from other sources so we were intrigued. This sort of thing is arrangement is called a CSA, about which you can read more here. Mrs. Bob and I are interested in eating organic and healthy foods. We are also interested in supporting local businesses. So this seemed like a natural fit.

In May, we tried to sign up for a CSA subscription with Kretschmann's Farms, but we ended up on their waiting list. It appears they agree to a limited number of subscriptions being left at each drop off point, and that too many people in our neighborhood wanted their services. Dang! In early to mid June I got a flier at work for a local company named Isidore Foods. While not a farm themselves, they are a new small local CSA distributor. They work with several local farms do distribute their goods, directly to consumers, the same way that CSA's do. Sounds like a good next step, so we decided to give them a go.

Last Thursday (6/26) my daughter and I drove to a neighbor's garage, and picked up our first box of fresh vegetables. It's amazing how many vegetables can fit in one box. Oh, and the strawberries….WOW , were they good. They are the one's on the left, and way better than their larger brethren on the right. There are a couple of new veggies in there for us. Mrs. Bob nor I had ever cooked beets before, and she's not overly fond of Zucchini (to say nothing of 6 in a week). But, we have committed to the CSA idea for the summer. Part of the commitment is that you get the vegetables that are in season this week, and you eat those. So, Mrs. Bob tried cooking both the beets and the beet greens. She wasn't overly fond of the greens, but I liked it all.

Week 1: good start! Next week we'll have to find some sort of cart to drag to our drop-off point 5 blocks away. This way we can burn personally stored fuel (really I should have plenty), rather than gas in the retrieval of our fresh veg. There was one item in our box that we couldn't identify. It's the picture with the quarter included for size reference. If you know what it is, please illuminate us. Tastes like garlic, but it is tiny. Maybe it's just tiny garlic.

Dueling movie sob stories

Start with this one: Be Careful What You Wish For

Then come back and read on...

So on Friday the family and I went to see "Kung Fu Panda," and I too was struck by the new pricing. I assume we were at the same theatre former known as Loews. Simplified structure huh? Used to be a movie that started before 5:00 (like ours at 4:50) qualified for the matinee rate. Oh well, one more way to gouge us. Next they will charge us for each piece of checked luggage (no wait that's someone else, and besides, I digress).

Back to the point. The crap is back, and worse than before. Rather than the crappy old slide show advertising with some annoying muzak, the crappy new “slide show” is clearly video, because there is slight movement in the 3-5 seconds that each ad is on the screen. And to make matters worse, each “ad” has its own accompanying 3-5 seconds of muzak. So you get a fade up, established crappy muzak, fade out…over and over and over. Hard to maintain a conversation over that up and down audio onslaught. Sheesh. And then it’s on to the typical sprint and Coke ads before the previews. So I am glad you enjoyed the brief crap hiatus.

But be careful what you whine about, however. It could be worse, as we learned the hard way. On Saturday my wife and I went out to see another movie (that’s two in the past six months for those of you in the audience with kindergarteners counting). This time because of the planned dining experience, we ended up at a movie theatre in Cranberry township. We thought: what’s the big difference. The tickets were even a dollar cheaper than those the previous night but…..

1. The air conditioning was out in the one theatre showing the movie we wanted to watch. It wasn’t too hot a day so we decided to chance it. In reality it wasn’t too bad, just a little muggy.
2. The seats themselves were some of the worst movie seats I have ever sat in. They were just plain worn out. Very uncomfortable. I did my “old man holding his back” walk out of the theatre.
3. We arrived about 5-10 minutes before the scheduled start time, and a slightly better version of the video crap ads were already running, so I thought maybe we’d get on to the movie not too long after the scheduled start time of the movie. A full 35 minutes after the scheduled start time of the movie, it actually started. Maybe 5 minutes of the holdup was previews for other movies, the rest of it was all ads. Aaaaakkkkk. Let me tell you we enjoyed losing that half hour of our lives, paying the sitter for that extra half hour, and all of us, the sitter included getting to sleep that much later…NOT

In the end we’ll pay the extra buck to go back to the first theatre, and apparently put up with the “new crap.” But we don’t go to the movies that much anymore anyway. This is just pushing us further from being interested.

Don't get me started on how much gas we used, and at what cost on that secon movie night.

This is how I know I am done with a season.

It's my e-mail's current usage graph. It' was the day to clear out all of the e-mails, and get ready for a new year! It feels very liberating. Now on to the next thing.

Geeky outlook script

Do you ever get that thing where for some unknown reason you can’t turn off your head and get to sleep? Well, I do. Sometimes when I am there, I sit down at my computer and take care of something on my next actions list. Helps me feel like I have accomplished something, gets it off my mind and allows me to sleep. Sometimes I end up being awake for longer.

I have been known to check my e-mail in the middle of the night (probably not a good idea, really). Sometimes I will respond to e-mails that are waiting, never mind the hour. This in itself is not so bad, except that sometimes people notice that I have been sending e-mails in the middle of the night (note the timestamp on this posting). I have been setting the “send e-mail later” option, so as to not appear like a work-aholic. But I’m human, sometimes I don’t remember.

Enter VBA Scripting for Outlook. Say what you like about Outlook, and there’s plenty to say, but the geek in me is enjoying the scripting functionality lately. I wrote my own Outlook script (very little code theft here – except from the help file, which I feel is legit), which checks the time at which I am sending a message and if it’s between midnight and 8:00 am, viola…I get this pop-up: I bet you can figure out what happens when I push each button. Another effective “smart part of the brain” tricking the “dumb part of the brain” tool. Yayy.

(If you are also a geek and want to know how to do this, ask, and I will gladly share the code I wrote)

Who’s got the most…Baggage?

I was thinking the other day about political baggage. You know, we’ve got this primary coming up, here in Pennsylvania. I really like both Hillary and Barack for different reasons. I have been trying to find something that will help me make up my mind, between them. It has occurred to me that with experience comes baggage, and maybe we could do with a little less of that. My mind wandered back to the Clinton Whitehouse years, and a few of the scandals that went on. Now you can’t really paint Hillary with the Monica Lewinsky scandal per say. Some folks will try to take her on for her actions in the wake of that scandal, but I don’t feel vitriolic enough to go there.

Does anyone remember whitewater though? I know nothing really stuck to the Clintons too hard on that one, but both of them were implicated. Surely some of the implications were spun by their opposition. But I would be easily convinced that there was something shady going on there, and that the Clintons have some of it on them as well.

Then the other day I finally got around to watching Fahrenheit 9/11. Talk about your baggage. A dynastic family with WAY too many business interests to possibly run the country without phenomenal conflict of interest. So, though I like some of what Hillary has to say, I wonder whom she is beholden too, and am a little leery.

Plus, I really liked Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech.. I guess I’m leaning his way currently. We’ll see how this ends up.

Air Travel today – another industry in need of better scheduling

I write today from the comfort of an exit row seat on a Northwest Airlines flight to Minneapolis. This is one of the first flights I have taken in quite a while where which wasn’t over 80% capacity. This allowed me to move to the exit row affording me the room between myself and the seat in front of me to use my laptop, as well as putting some space in between me and the screaming baby that was in the row behind my assigned seat. Boy did I feel bad for that mom flying alone trying to comfort her child, obviously acutely aware of the disruption her child’s crying was making. Been there. Overfull flights, cramped seating, crying children. These are pretty standard air travel complaints, hardly worth making.

This is my 5th flight in two weeks, the third of which was delayed. Annoying as that is, it is also not a new complaint. What is interesting is that today’s flight was delayed by 20 minutes, just as last Sunday’s flight was delayed by an hour, due to “mandatory crew rest period.” I am sure this is not a new regulation. I am sure that other flights have been delayed for the same reason. I am also positive that this is a good reason to keep a plane on the ground. FAA mandatory Pilot rest is every bit as important as DOT mandatory Truck Driver rest. There are probably a few other things for which mandated rest would not be a bad idea. But I digress.

What sticks in my craw is that this is a delay that is completely avoidable through more careful scheduling. Someone in the NWA crew scheduling department needs to 1) take a class in Critical Path Management, and 2) build in slightly larger cushions to allow for schedule pinches caused by the inevitable weather delays. I know that money is tight in the airline industry today, for many reasons. However, Northwest will lose customers if it can’t more reliably schedule its flights and crews. I for one will avoid further Northwest flights, assuming I have a reasonable option on another carrier. At present I have three more flights booked before Valentines Day with Northwest. We’ll see if they can redeem themselves at all, and whether this delay will cause either me or my checked luggage to miss the connecting flight out of Minneapolis.