The Plural of Batman

We were driving home when the conversation turned, as it sometimes will, to Batman. I was reading a Chick-Fil-A honey barbeque sauce packet when I came across the words "to protect flavor", and it all went downhill from there, as we imagined tiny microscopic versions of Batman, protecting flavor molecules from harm as though the sauce packet were a gooey Gotham City.

Dave was quite excited about microscopic caped crusaders. "Wouldn't that be awesome? You could look through a microscope and see tons of tiny Batmen!"

Well, I couldn't let that stand. Silly husband. "You mean 'Batmans'. One Batman, many Batmans."

"But the plural of man is men," argued Dave. "So several bat-like men would be Batmen."

"It's an exception," I said, "because it's his title. Like Surgeons General."

"So, it should be Batsman."

"Not a chance. Surgeons General is all weird because it's using general as an adjective. If we were talking about many generals who also happened to be accomplished surgeons, then they'd be surgeon generals, but we're talking about many surgeons, generally. 'Man' is a noun, so there's no way that Batsman makes any sense as a plural for Batman."

He sat quietly at the light for a second.

"How about mansbat?"

Geeks on a Boat

Belonging is not a feeling I'm intimately familiar with. In an average social situation, I often feel like an anthropologist watching a foreign culture in action, absorbing what's going on and seeking tribal acceptance by copying their ways. This explains my Backstreet Boys phase. Unfortunately, I'm a lousy anthropologist and often find myself up to my neck in a metaphorical pot of water being boiled for dinner after I say something stupid.

I'm a geek. I fought it for a long time, because it's not exactly a label that gets you many friends in school. I was a teacher's pet, my brain full of trivia and my nose always in a book. I once invented homework so my parents would let me stay up later. I got a tattoo when I was nineteen, and my mother's reaction was "it's about time you do something stupid". I'm not claiming to be a genius - far from it. But I like knowing things. And then knowing those things makes me want to know more things about other things connected to those things.

Last week, I went on an adventure. I spent a week on a cruise ship in the Caribbean with my husband. But we weren't alone. Well, of course not - we didn't charter the ship for ourselves. What I mean to say is, this was a special cruise. It was JoCo Cruise Crazy II, a week-long event featuring a bunch of great performers and activities... for geeks.

I had my reservations about going on this trip. My husband was totally psyched about it, but while I was a fan of many of the talented people listed as performers for the cruise, I'm not a beachy, cruisy person by nature, and I worried I would be bored, trapped on a boat for a week. But it meant a lot to him, so I figured it was worth a shot, and he'd owe me the vacation of my choice next year.

Well, next year I want to go back on this cruise. Not so much for the beaches - I'm pretty sure I just quadrupled my shot at melanoma with that sunburn - and not for the shows, as amazing as they were. The people I met on this cruise were so incredibly great. Wil Wheaton, one of the performers, commented on how great it was to be surrounded by so many geeks of different kinds, and reminded us what it means to be a geek: to be really into something, to want to know everything about it, and to want to share it with everyone because you think it's so neat. Whether it's gaming, math, computers, medicine, or anime, everyone on that ship was a geek of some stripe, and since we all had that in common, nobody felt like an anthropologist watching the natives and their strange customs.

The best events on the cruise were the ones the performers were only tangentially involved with. Karaoke nights, open mic night, games of every kind happening all over the ship, a ukulele flash mob, and more events than I could have possibly attended even if I'd cloned myself. Several people said they'd go on this cruise again without the Famous People ^(TM), and I'm inclined to agree. They and their performances were really fantastic, and I'll tell you more about them soon, but the feeling of geek summer camp for grownups (on a boat) really affected a lot of us, and I hope we'll stay in touch and not lose that. We belonged on that ship. What a great feeling.

Valentine's Day

Three years ago today, I sat on the edge of my Mom's bed in Montreal as Dave held out a diamond ring and asked me if I would marry him.

I said "duh!"

And the rest is history.

I'm a lucky lady.

Thing a Day 2012, tiny envelopes

I love the excuse to hang out and make stuff. I think if I didn't have a job and laundry to worry about, I'd waste a ton of time on crafty things, because it's fun and the results are usually worth it. And if they're not, they're at least something to learn from for the next time.

Thanks to the popular time-sucking website, Pinterest, I have a whole pile of crafts I want to try, and one of them was making tiny gift-card envelopes out of pretty paper. This one did not necessitate a trip to Michael's, because I have some wrapping paper and scrapbook paper, and plenty of glue, making this a very cheap activity!

While I was able to find free envelope templates online, my printer refused to print, so I was stuck making my own by tracing a gift card and trying to copy the template off my computer screen. Here's my result:

I traced it onto cardboard to make it easier to use, and then I cut my shape out of a page of pretty scrapbook paper, folded it up, and stuck it together after swiping a glue stick across the essential parts.

I tested it with a gift card, and it's a little tight - I can get the card in, but can barely get it back out, so the recipient will need to rip the envelope. That's fine with me, since it's not meant to be a keepsake or anything, but I'll probably remake my template and give it a little more space before I try making any more. I don't want people to have to wrestle with their presents!

Thing a Day 2012, Valentine's Day Card

Last year, I made a Valentine's Day card for my 96-year-old grandmother as one of my Thing-A-Day crafts. She's now my 97-year-old grandmother, and still loves getting cards, so I did it again.

It's a plain card from Michael's, with some cutouts from scrapbook paper. Inside, I glued a fuzzy purple heart and stamped "love you". I'm planning on writing her a long letter to go with this card, and I'll also send her my origami sea creatures, because I think she'd get a kick out of them. I'll have to send this card to my mom, who will bring it to Grandmaman, because she's in a hospital room these days and doesn't really have a mailing address. It's complicated, but it'll get there.

Thing a Day 2012, Origami things

I'm getting a slow start compared to some of my online friends who are really talented artists, but my first things for Thing-A-Day 2012 are some origami sea creatures.

I remember, back in Grade 5, having to make hundreds of paper cranes to decorate the stage for our Christmas pageant, because our theme was "peace" and we'd just read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes in English class. I got so good at it I could make them with my eyes closed, and every now and then when I come across a square of paper, I start folding it into a crane. Sadly, cranes are all I know how to make.

Luckily for me, there are hundreds of websites with detailed origami diagrams - some even have videos - and with their help I was able to make some things that are definitely not cranes. I don't know these new folds by heart yet, but they were both pretty easy.

What's for Dinner - Stuffed Pork Chops

I cheated on the use-it-up challenge. I bought pork chops at Costco because I had a coupon, they looked delicious, and it was an incredible price. I also cheated last week when I bought Goldfish crackers, but let's ignore that.

These were the biggest, thickest pork chops I've ever seen. An inch and a half thick! the package was 6.75 pounds, and there were 11 pieces in it, so if you do the pork chop math, it comes out to over half a pound per delicious chop. Are you drooling yet?

I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them. Stuff them! The pork chops I get at the grocery store aren't usually fat enough to stuff, so I was really excited about the wonderful opportunity in my fridge. Thank you, Costco, for making a recipe dream come true.

This recipe isn't really a recipe, because I threw it together and didn't take notes, but you can do the same thing and get a great result, I promise! This is the best kind of recipe, because you don't really need to measure or pay attention.

I cut a pocket in two pork chops and sprinkled the inside and outside with some salt and pepper. I made about a cup of Stovetop stuffing, but with less water than the instructions say, because I figured the pork chop juice would add a lot of squishiness and I didn't want watery stuffing. I crammed as much as I could fit into those pork chops and tried to pinch them closed so it wouldn't fall out. I heated some butter in a pan, rubbed the pork chops with a little ground sage, and dropped them in to brown well on both sides.

I moved the chops to a baking dish and put in a splash of chicken broth to help prevent them from drying out, and I cooked them at 350F for about 30 minutes, until my meat thermometer told me it was safe. Depending how fat your chops are and how long you browned them, your cook time can vary a lot. Use a thermometer, check after 20 minutes, and keep going from there.

When they were done, I put the original pan back on the stove with more butter and whisked in some flour over medium heat. I added chicken broth and simmered and whisked until it looked right to me, then I added some sauteed mushrooms and onions that I pulled out of the freezer (I thawed them first in the microwave).

I am glad that I have nine giant pork chops left, because that means I get to do this again.

Thing-A-Day 2012

Just one more sleep until February gets here (barring a nap, of course), which means it's time to register for Thing-A-Day 2012! It's a fun way to push yourself into creativity mode by creating one thing every day for the month of February. Anything counts: crafts, recipes, painting, poetry, photography, even some good doodles on a Post-it note. All you have to do is spend a few minutes each day creating something new, and share it with the other participants (or not, but seeing everyone's creations is so much fun). The goal is to create a little time for yourself every day where you can be creative and use your imagination and make something interesting.

I'm going to try very hard to do as many days as possible, but I'm going to be forgiving of myself if I get too busy. The idea is for the creations to be little things, not days-long artistic endeavors, but I don't want to spend a bunch of money at Michael's so I can make crafty crap just for the sake of making crafty crap, and then have to find a place for it or throw it out. This challenge isn't supposed to be stressful, so if it becomes a burden, I will let it go.

I will share my Things on my blog, so stay tuned...

Flowers in January

I found a crocus in my yard today. A beautiful, sunny, yellow crocus, poking up out of the grass by the mailbox.

I'm very happy to see it, and it makes me smile, but for crying out loud, it's January 29th! Apparently crocus bulbs are triggered to flower when they encounter a warm spell after a long enough cold dormant period, so the strange weather we've had all winter confused this little guy into waking up early.

My tulips and daffodils are sprouting up too, and I hope they don't get killed off by the frosts that are coming, because there's a way to go before spring actually gets here, and I'd like to have some flowers in March and April!

Project update: living and dining room

Finally, I get to report back about the walls in the living and dining rooms, from which we tore wallpaper many, many months ago. To refresh your memory, here's my original post about removing the wallpaper. The date? April 2011. Almost a year ago. I blame other projects getting in the way, not enough weekends in a year, and a bad case of procrastination. I love how at the end of that post, I say I'll have an update in a couple of weeks. Optimistic!

Here's the "before" picture again, but be careful - looking at it may cause side effects such as nausea and cross-eyes.

Baby blue with Barbie pink, and a dingy grey trim. Not exactly visually appealing, to say the least. The pink part was originally covered in a silvery blue wallpaper:

I guess it was less offensive with the wallpaper hiding the pink stuff, but we're not really the wallpaper type, and it was old, dirty, and full of nicks and tears.

It took us a while to find the right colors for these rooms. The main consideration was for them not to be blue. Or pink. And especially not both (so purple was right out). For a while I toyed with the idea of using white beadboard for the bottom half of the room, but it would have been a lot of work to cut it for all the outlets and baseboard heaters, so we stuck with paint. Here's how it looks now:

Don't worry, Donald approves. He just hates having his picture taken.

We chose to do the trim in bright white, both because it looks nice, and because it's going to be easier to deal with the trim in the house if we do everything in white. With baseboard heaters and crown molding in most rooms, and a chair rail, bay window, and built-in shelves in the living room and dining room, we have a lot of trim, so this way we always just need to buy plain white paint to touch up damaged areas, instead of figuring out which almost-white color we used for which room.

The top half is called "Churchill Hotel Ecru", and in reality it's not quite as pinkish as the Donald photo makes it out to be. The picture of the built-in shelves is more accurate. The bottom half is "Churchill Hotel Maple", and the fact that they're both from the same historic building reassures me that they go well together. They're both from Valspar's National Trust for Historic Preservation collection. Yes, we like neutrals, and most of the house is painted in calm neutral colors, but I'm ok with that. As much as I admire the bright colors on home decorating shows, I don't think I'd be happy with them in my own home for very long. Nice to look at, but not to live in, at least for me.

Within a month or two, after we paint the family room downstairs, we'll also be checking "new floors" off our to-do list, and I'm excited to see how different and wonderful this place will look once we replace the nasty old stained carpets with fluffy new ones (and some hardwood)!