Instagrammatron

So, it's easier to see me on Instagram now: broomcakes. Go there to see what I'm doing.

Done.

I don't really want to write here anymore.

I find myself enjoying more visual blog platforms.

So, for now, follow me on Instagram.

Holding Pattern

I haven't posted here because the next post that I need to write is Bones' memorial. My last post announced that Bones was in the hospital awaiting a liver ultrasound. The results of that ultrasound were not good. Bones had a large, untreatable, inoperable cancerous tumor in his liver. We made the decision to euthanize after receiving this news. Needless to say, this was an emotionally devastating day, and I am still struggling to get through the days without him. I would like to write more about him when I can compose my thoughts without devolving into a hideous, sobbing mess. Until then, I'm maintaining blog silence.

Holiday Cake

Right now, Bones is in the hospital, awaiting an ultrasound of his liver, to figure out why he was sick and acting strangely yesterday. I am anything but relaxed. However, I've been meaning to write this post for ages, so I'm going to do it anyway.

*****

Terri's Jewish Apple Cake Recipe



A long time ago, when I was in the later years of elementary school, my mom bought a home and school produced cook book from one of my younger cousins. You know the kind, with recipes contributed by kids' moms, spiral bound, and with some student art on the cover. At some point, my mom started making this recipe for Jewish Apple Cake. It was (and is) really good.



Sixteen years ago today, CPM and I had our first date (heh, did not realize that until just this minute). You know how in the first blush of a relationship, you go over all the reasons that you are "meant" to be with this person? I claim this cake as one of them. The recipe, you see, was CPM's mom's contribution to the elementary school cook book. (He and my cousin had attended the same elementary school.)

I can sort of recall the moment that I realized this...I was standing in my mom's kitchen, and somehow the topic of the cake came up. I pulled out the cookbook, looked at his mother's name next to the recipe, and it smacked me in the face, that my family had been eating and enjoying this cake of his mom's for years before I ever met CPM. If that isn't destiny talking, I'm not sure what it was.

I make the cake every year at Christmas. While CPM and I don't actually observe the holiday, preferring instead to eat Thai food and watch bad TV or a movie, some things are sacred, like the annual cookie baking. This cake is one of those things. It's easy to bake, and is quite amazing tasting. Make it. You won't be sorry.

I keep the recipe on the same piece of spiral notebook paper that I copied it onto. The paper is stained, and crinkled, from being used so many times.

Ingredients
3/4 cup sugar
1 TBSP cinammon
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
4 cups flour
4 TSP baking powder
1 TSP salt
1 cup orange juice
1 cup oil
4 large applies, peeled, cored and sliced thinly

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine 3/4 cup sugar with 1 TBSP cinnamon in a small bowl and set aside. Grease and flour a tube cake pan.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream eggs and sugar. Add the rest of the ingredients, except the apples, and mix well. The batter will be very thick.

Add 1/2 of the batter to the prepared cake pan. Add apples and 2/3 of the sugar mixture, gently smooshing apples into the cake batter. Add the remaining batter, covering the apples evenly. Sprinkle the batter with the remaining sugar. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Remove cake from oven, cool on wire rack.

Getting this thing out of the pan can be a challenge. I normally loosen it with a cake spatula, put a plate on top of the cake (it will have risen over the top of the cake pan), flip the cake out of the pan, then put a plate on the bottom of the cake, and flip it back over. You will get cinnamon sugar all over yourself and the floor, but this is the only way to get it out.

Eat and enjoy. (Sorry for the crap photos, I've been using my iPhone for everything lately. My poor DSLR sits lonely in a basket in the foyer of the house. I think I need an EyeFi card for it.)

Good Stuff

In no particular order...

The post "work holiday party", free-drink happy hour...I haven't attended a post holiday party happy hour in ten years. It was time. I walked ten blocks through the city back to my car carrying my heels. Thankfully, it was not as cold on this day as it has been in years past.



Live animal nativities. Even though I am not religious at all, put a baby animal in my path, and I'm happy.



This salmon recipe from Martha Stewart Whole Living. I've made it twice. It's dead easy and delicious.



Raspberry Lemon Thumbprint Cookies (made with Kerrygold salted butter, because I am a baking rebel).



My new, go to chocolate chip cookie recipe. I only waited five hours for the first batch, but the rest of the dough is currently "curing" in my refrigerator. Based on my sample tastes, these are incredible. Also, I got myself some Silpats! Finally!



Not so good stuff...getting peed on by your favorite girl puppy, while laying on the couch with your feet safely tucked beneath her bottom, because she recently received a steroid shot and sleepy time is now also temporarily known as "pee on mommy while sleeping time." I still bought her the squeaky holiday hedgehog, which she eviscerated in ten minutes.

Miscellany

At the vet...Bones says, "Get me out of here."


The following list is in no particular order and the photo above has nothing to do with anything. Bones is just awesome.

-My holiday shopping is done. I cannot wait for the day when all of my various nieces and nephews are old enough to be okay receiving a gift card or cash. I'm half way there. I firmly believe that the ones who still believe in Santa deserve to open up some annoying toy from me. Hence, Amazon, Target and "the mall" have all received hefty infusions of cash from me. Bleh. Thankfully, the mall was eerily empty on both of my visits. As usual, there is not one decoration chez moi. I will however, probably be baking cookies this weekend. I still maintain some vestiges of holiday cheer, even if they are not present in the other half.

-Four weekends, four seasons of Breaking Bad down. Am I late to the party? A little. The spouse and I prefer to watch television this way, obsessively staying up too late to cram in just one more episode. It is everything that Dexter used to be...engaging, thought provoking, frustrating, maddening. Good television.

-My new favorite supermarket is the Whole Foods in Plymouth Meeting. I may just be purposely scheduling my shopping trips to lunchtime so that I can eat the pizza from their brick oven. It is awesome! They have beer! And a taco truck! They will make you a burger and fries!

-Ate at Distrito, discovered that there is a reason Jose Garces is an Iron Chef. Great food, fun atmosphere, and a crane game where CPM and I almost won a Mexican wrestling mask. Still, I think I prefer Cantina Feliz, for locational convenience and familiarity.

I was thankful for my stretchy waist yoga pants.

For the seventh consecutive year, the spouse and I spent Thanksgiving with some of my favorite people. I think that it all started because we were all vegetarians who felt left out of our family's traditional celebrations, who just couldn't stomach another year of eating the gross frozen corn and fielding the "what does a vegetarian eat/don't you miss meat" questions. There is also the whole "avoiding the family drama" element that is a wonderful side effect of this tradition. Thus, Thanksgiving has become one of my most highly anticipated holidays.

Recently, the spouse and I have moved into the realm of eating fish. The spouse has gone a step further, and introduced sustainably sourced meat and poultry to his diet. Thus, Jaime decided to add an actual turkey breast to the menu. This does not upset me. I have never been a big fan of the "protein" part of Thanksgiving, so I didn't miss having the Quorn roast substitute (which recently has decided to disagree with me my digestive system, blah). I was always fond of the big plate o'sides, albeit freshly made sides.

Sometimes, in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, I get discouraged...I don't want to make pie crust from scratch, I don't want to chop apples, blah blah blah. But then I do it, and it's easy, and I'm eating tasty food that was made with love.

My contributions to this year's menu:
Green Bean Casserole (I subbed Trader Joe's Fried Onions, and loved it.)

Smoky Brussel Sprout Gratin from the December 2011 issue of Martha Stewart Living

Bourbon Cranberry Sauce (Ridiculously easy, ridiculously delicious.)

Creamy Mashed Cauliflower (Roast the garlic, it's better this way. Also, I probably didn't need to make this, as we had too much food.)

Pumpkin pie (unknown internet recipe). I always use the pie crust recipe from my Cuisinart food processor.

Apple pie. Once again, my own crust recipe.

The spread.


My (first) plate (yes, I ate two whole plates of food).


I ate so much food this time that I had to change into yoga pants when I got home, and then take the dogs for a long walk in an attempt to burn some calories. I think it took me two whole days to fully digest everything. Thanksgiving Success!

No Chili Peppers?

I made this chili for dinner last night. I will now publicly declare that I love this chili so much that I will marry it. Of course, I never follow a recipe exactly, so here's what I changed:

1. Instead of using fresh serrano peppers, I chopped a can of chili peppers in adobo sauce. This added a lot of spice, but we like our food spicy. Thanks, Whole Foods, for this. I'm not sure I understand how a store can sell every odd vegetable out there, but not have one type of chile pepper available for purchase in the produce section, not even the lowly jalapeno. (Yes, I asked. They had none.) However, I will continue to use the canned peppers, because I loved the flavor of the chili with them.

2. Instead of fresh tomatoes, I used one can of diced tomatoes with green chiles, and one can of diced tomatoes. Tomatoes are out of season here, and I refuse to purchase the crappy ones that can be used as tennis balls. (I will however buy Kumatos. I love those things. They are an oddly tasty engineered version of the tomato.)

3. I omitted the tomato sauce and the additional water/broth, as I did not want my chili to become soup.

I served it with nonfat Greek yogurt (instead of sour cream) and some grated cheddar. On my side of the table, I crunched up some tortilla chips on top and made myself a "frito pie." This one is a keeper.

Cooking Some Stuff

I finally got around to making this Pumpkin Cranberry Bread. I have had it bookmarked for a while, and then added it to my Pinterest desserts board when I started cleaning out the million food bookmarks that I had emailed to myself over the years. (Side note: Pinterest = Awesome). My only modification was to skip the nuts. I hate nuts in baked goods. I simply added extra cranberries. Thus was born my favorite quick bread, ever. Ever. This shit is good.



The spouse has been doing this minimal carbs thing for several months now. I've been doing my best to accommodate his diet, and he's been really successful (lost +50 lbs thus far). At first, it was difficult, as I would frequently resort to pasta for dinner on a weeknight because it was so quick and easy. Now, I just resort to soups and salads. (When I want pasta, I make him spaghetti squash, and I measure out and prepare my portion of pasta. This is an easy compromise.) Occasionally, I go a little crazy, as I did yesterday, and make a full meal. I made crab cakes for the first time. I'm not linking to the recipe that I used, because I'm not satisfied that they were as awesome as they could have been. They were simply tasty, but I didn't want extra. I made mashed cauliflower (skipped the scallions because I hate them, and next time I will roast the garlic before adding it--raw was a little too much bite). I also caramelized some red onions and threw them on some baby arugula with goat cheese and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. That was really good. Onions plus lettuce plus cheese plus vinegar equals delicious.

Remembering

Lately, I've spent lots of commuting time lost in memories of my childhood. I recently discovered a new route to work, which eliminates lots of waiting in traffic, and takes me past two houses that I lived in while growing up.

My childhood memories are mostly of the not good variety. My parents divorced early, and lots of my memories involve moving around to new houses/new schools, various dramatic and emotional parental/custody disputes, stress about money/clothes/food, etc. Look, I wasn't burned with cigarettes or starved in a basement as a punishment, so I had it pretty good when compared to some of the crap that you hear about today. But it wasn't the best way to grow up, and I'm certain that my childhood has majorly influenced my decision to not ever have kids.

There are absolutely good memories. Some just smacked me out of the blue this morning, for no apparent reason. Growing up, my mom would late me stay up late, long past my bedtime on a school night for two reasons: to watch either The Sound of Music or The Wizard of Oz when they came on network TV. This was before the time of VCRs, and before cable, so this was really special. To this day, I love those movies. I can also remember the Christmas that I was seven, living in the one house that I drive past, the last year that I believed in Santa, waking up in the middle of the night, sneaking down the steps, and seeing our tree lit up, with piles of presents beneath it, and just getting this awesome, magical feeling that Santa had REALLY come! The memory of that feeling can still give me goose pimples.

Sometimes, I have to remind myself that my childhood was not all bad. Lots of times, I really wished that I could be sent to a boarding school, which I now understand was my way of wishing to not be involved in all of the drama, to escape, to pretend to be someone else. (This was long before my adolescent "rebellious" phase, when I think every kid just wants to get the hell out of their parents' home, and be able to live their own life. When I left for college, I never moved back.)

I am happy with the person that I have become. I know that the struggles of my childhood made me who I am. Sometimes, though, I wonder who I might have been, if I had the "perfect" life...

Confessions

I got braces when I was 14, at the start of ninth grade. I was very excited about this, because I thought it meant that I was a "real" teenager. (I also got glasses the same year, and purposely picked out frames that were like Andrea's on 90210...true story. Obviously, I spent too much time reading Sweet Valley High and watching television as a pre-teen.)

So, braces. I wore these braces for almost the entire four years of high school. Thanks to my lovely overbite (which never got corrected, thank you very much Mr. Asshole Orthodontist), my front tooth, already missing a small chip on the backside due to an unfortunate altercation with a chair at the age of 12, bit down on the braces on my bottom teeth and an unsightly chip appeared in its bottom edge.

By my senior year, I had had enough of these braces. I was already at least a year past the "you'll only need them for two years" point. I begged my mom to get them off of me. She relented, and had to sign a waiver at the orthodontist in order for them to be removed. I'm sure she promised not to sue the asshole doctor (once again, thanks for nothing, jerk, my teeth looked the same when the braces came off). As he removed my braces, and tsked, he filed down the chipped tooth "to even it out", and ever since, that tooth has appeared snaggly. I hate it. It's my number one detested facial flaw (next to my forehead chicken pox scars that you probably barely notice, but that look like moon craters to me, since I had to live through the embarrassing agony of having them since I was 10).

So, if you take my picture from beneath me (as in the above shot, taken by the 5 year old nephew), or from certain angles, you can see the resulting snaggly tooth. And it horrifies me. I actually have lots of nightmares about my teeth, falling out, me pulling them out, etc. I need to get over this.

Yard Work and Stuff

Today, there are 17 bags of leaves waiting to be picked up by my township from my curb. On Saturday, I had to borrow my oldest nephew to help me rake the leafy detritus into baggable piles, or else I would still be working on it. We worked for six hours, stopping only to cram lunch into our craws. The best part is that my maple tree is only half done its annual shed.

On Sunday, I spent a rare, lovely afternoon with CPM in Chestnut Hill at the Fall Arts Festival. Sometimes, the weather around here cooperates, and we experience something new that makes us remember that occasionally life isn't so bad on the east coast (notice I said "sometimes"). We saw lots of cute puppies (new obsession, Italian Mastiffs, gentle giants, who seem to hate cats) and performed our favorite activity...people watching. We ended the day at Farmicia, dining with a good friend (I tasted a piece of boneless lamb chop. I'm sorry, but it was the greatest thing I have ever eaten.), and talked about learning Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. (I could never hit someone, even just pretending/sparring, so it was just fantasy talk.)

Yesterday, I had my sister's youngest children for the day. We visited Linvilla Orchards with friends, intending to get some pumpkins and pick some apples. Note to self...do not visit Linvilla Orchards ever again on a school holiday. You know that scene in Toy Story 3, where the younger kids are set loose on the toys in the day care, and all hell breaks loose? It was like that, except with overflowing trash cans, smelly animal pens, and the dregs of Delaware County, PA, crowding every inch of free space. We wanted to pick apples, but the apples were all picked out by 3:00 (just checked the website, and the orchard is giving itself a week to recover from the crowds). The ride home was tense...the youngest kid passed out, and the older kid accused me of always giving in to the five year old (I refused to hike back down to the hayride area when our apple picking plans feel through, shuddering at the thought of dealing with the crowds, and I also nixed face painting because the line was too long). I had to remind her that she was once five years old too, and people usually cave in to the younger kids, whose coping mechanisms often involve lots of public shrieking. Also, the youngest is prone to migraines, and he said that he had a headache, so I was sympathetic. I had one too.

We did however, get pumpkins.

Seriously?

My day yesterday, in list format:

-Drove past a guy without a nose on my morning commute. Instead of a nose, he had a band aid where his nose should have been. Creepy.

-As part of my job, I photograph all new hires in my building on their first day. One of them wasn't wearing underpants yesterday. How do I know? Because when I escorted her back to the lobby, her bare ass was hanging out of her pants. Classy.

All that got me through the remaining portion of my day was the thought of the lovely meal I was planning to prepare...spaghetti squash and pesto, broccoli rabe and roasted red peppers, veggie sausage. It's a pretty time consuming preparation process for a work night, so of course I needed every minute available to me upon my return from work...thus it is no surprise that the following occurred:

-I stepped in dog poop in my yard during afternoon playtime with the dogs. While I normally follow Bones around with a bag, due to his tendency to poop on the run, his father is not so fastidious. Thus, there are sometimes little surprises in portions of the yard. (I actually keep track...did Bones poop twice in my presence today? No? Then I need to do a yard recon and find the second poop. That's fun.)

-When I took my shoe into the house to clean it in the basement sink, I saw that Rocky, the cat, had once again decided to hang his ass OUTSIDE of his litter box and shit on the basement floor. His litter box is kept in pristine condition, cleaned daily, and had just been completely redone with fresh litter the day prior. I guess he didn't want to mess up the fresh litter.

Hence, I was drinking a pumpkin beer while I cooked. All was well.

Fall.

Surprise. It's fall. But, it's not the good fall, where the weather is crisp, the sun is shining, and you momentarily delight in breaking out the hooded sweatshirts and cozy pants. No, it's the crap fall, where the temperature cuts you down to the bone and it's damp and raining, and everything smells like wet dog in your house. I did nothing this weekend. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Except for (pet and human) food shopping. Upon my return from the food stores, I immediately put my pajamas back on and went back to bed. Yup, it was that kind of weekend.

Honestly, I argued with myself yesterday over whether I should even bother to clean the bathroom. (The bathroom won, it got cleaned.) I did however do this thing I've been meaning to do for a while. I picked up the knitting again.

Why, yes, they are DPNs!


I'm teaching myself to knit socks. I'm using this book and various Youtube videos.

So far, it's working. Here is the cuff.


I can see some careless mistakes, but overall, I think I like to knit little things like socks. I don't have to park myself in one spot for ages before I see progress.

Ugh. Me. Impatient.

I've been trying to knit again. I started a sweater pattern. Then I remembered why I stopped knitting. And I also learned a whole new reason.

First, I am incapable of sitting still for long periods of time at home (unless I am watching television or a movie or a movie on the television). I am also not allowed to sit still for long periods of time at home (because my dog is an insane herding beast who interprets my almost stillness as "time to go annoy mom and make her interact with me and my tennis ball" time). And finally, my new reason, today I learned that I fucking hate circular knitting needles.

I will still try to knit some god damn socks, and maybe a new scarf or some shit that I can do on straight needles. But I swear, I am not interested in patterns that require circular needles. Lesson learned. They make me want to stab myself in the face with the pointy end.

Social Networking

I recently realized that I belong to or use a great number of social networks...

Facebook. Twitter. Flickr. Pinterest. Instagram. Ravelry (just joined, trying to take up knitting again).

I used to have my Twitter linked to my Facebook, so that all my FB buds could see my random musings on Twitter. (Actually, I only posted to FB from Twitter.) Recently, I unlinked them. I decided that FB is to be a reflection of my more friendly side, while Twitter is to be a reflection of my naughty side. As I said in my first post-severance tweet, I gave myself a split personality. The truth is, I felt constrained by the "friendship" of several younger relatives on FB...I tended to edit the cuss words and such from some of my more clever tweets, or to hold back altogether. No more. Twitter shall be unedited. I'll need to start a swear jar. I have an unfortunate habit of dropping f-bombs or making inappropriate remarks on the regular in real life. While it may be unladylike, it's just my authentic ribald self.

For the record, my new favorite social networking places are Instagram and Pinterest. Maybe it is because they are fresh and new...I'm not really sure. I do know that if you stick a clever photo with some witty text, I'm hooked.

Cranky

Someone pushed the cranky button inside my brain yesterday. There was no particular reason to be cranky, I just found myself in a really foul mood, which seemed to worsen as the day progressed.

On my usual post dinner dog walk, I saw this.







I was instantly less cranky.

Today, I'm wearing a scarf out of necessity. This does make me cranky. I am not ready for cold weather.

Perfectionism. My Curse.

I have officially survived hosting our first round of house guests in the new, tinier homestead. Not only that, but we crammed more people into the sleeping areas than we ever fit into the old, larger abode. I am now ready to open a bed and breakfast. I got this.

Since we moved into the new place, we had always intended to have some sort of celebratory barbecue, something to mark the fact that we survived our renovation with our sanity relatively intact. Of course, my perfectionism prevented me from planning this event. There were always little things that I wanted to have done before I exposed our home to guests. The yard looks like a desert in some places and like an overgrown weed jungle in others. It isn't the perfectly manicured landscape that I have dreamed it to be. The driveway concrete is a nightmare. The trim work around the clerestory windows is not done. The fireplace is still empty. Blah blah blah and on and on and on. It took me some time to realize that no one except me actually cares about these things. People will eat food and drink beer anywhere. The only shortfall of the house is that we don't have the fancy butt spray toilet seat on the guest toilet yet. We need to get another one of those, pronto.

Thus, when we opened the home for friends to spend the weekend (at one point 11 people were sleeping in my 850 square foot house), it seemed the perfect opportunity to throw a practice party. Of course, my perfectionism also extends to parties, and I went insane on the food prep and alcohol selections. Burgers and dogs on my grill? No way. I made seitan and veggie skewers (my own recipe), shrimp and pineapple skewers, flank steak, spicy baked beans, vegan blueberry cobbler, guacamole (also my own recipe), and german potato salad. I bought a lot of soda and tons of fancy beer (yeah, no Coors lite for us, just a selection of locally brewed craft beers). Someone brought cupcakes from Crumbs (butter cream perfection). While it was a lot of work, since I have that gene that makes me happy when I am feeding and entertaining people, it was well worth it.

Oh yeah, I know I mentioned it, but I'm saying this again...I cooked effing steak on my grill. An actual bloody piece of meat. It got rave reviews. After it was marinated and cooked, of course. My sister and I were both completely grossed out as I sliced it open to find it to be perfectly medium rare AKA still bleeding. We both wondered if I had undercooked it (I actually used the timer on my iPhone because I have no idea how to cook steak). Then we recalled that my mom's steak always looked like this. Actually, my sister reminded me that my mom would eat it while it was still walking around, so we figured I was safe. And I was. No one died!

There is nothing better than a circle of friends in lawn chairs. All we were missing was the fire ring. Next time!

Lessons Learned

I retrieved CPM from JFK airport on Friday afternoon, just in time for us to jointly experience the wonder of Hurricane Irene's attack on the Midatlantic. I learned some valuable survival lessons. In no particular order, they follow below.

Bananas are now on the pre apocalyptic food shopping list, meaning you won't find any on your last minute supermarket trip, along with eggs, milk and bread. Apparently, survival french toast has been upgraded to banana french toast.

When you make that preparatory food shopping trip, avoid purchasing perishable items. Two weeks without a spouse in the house meant that my cupboard was totally bare upon his return, since I didn't actually do any food shopping in his absence. Since I was at the store shopping for the storm anyway, I grabbed the normal collection of food stuffs, yogurts, cheeses and such. In our previous home in the city, this would have been a non issue, as we NEVER lost power. In the new suburban home, we were without power for 12 hours, and I mentally cursed myself at every opportunity for having so much food that might spoil on hand. Next time, I'll stick to simply buying peanut butter and fruit until AFTER all threat of a power loss is past, and then go back to get the dairy and frozen foods.

Your nifty tank-less hot water heater, which saves you soooooo much money every month on your utility bills, needs power to heat the water. I took an ice cold shower with a flashlight shining on me. It felt a lot like what I imagine prison to be like. (Normally, I would have just skipped the shower, but I actually had to leave the house to socialize with people at a baby shower, so it was sort of necessary.) We need to get a back up battery for this. (Or, we need to just bite the bullet and put in a generator.)

This soup is really good, especially when it is rainy. I made it rather spicy (accidentally bought a can of hot hatch chiles), used whole milk instead of heavy cream, and tempeh bacon instead of regular bacon. We're eating it for dinner again tonight. If the power hadn't come back, and the leftovers had spoiled, I would have been severely put out.

Your garage door opener won't open without power. Duh. We should have gotten the one with the battery back up. We also should not have lost the key to the manual garage door. Double duh.

When you wake up to find the power is out, there isn't much you can do except go out for breakfast. I had this delectable stuffed french toast from Green Eggs Cafe.



Yes, I had the materials on hand to make my own, thanks to the shopping, but I didn't want to open the fridge and compromise the temperature. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

And just for fun, here is a lovely shot of the normally sedate Pennypack Creek, engorged to the size of a raging torrent.



Like lemmings, on the way home from breakfast, we followed all of the other cars on the road and parked to gawk at the spectacle.

When the power returns, your neighbors will actually cheer.

True Blood has been really mediocre this season (not really a hurricane lesson, just wanted to get this out there), except for the lovely amount of Eric and Alcide naked butt shots.

Earthquake Musings

On my lunch hour yesterday, I decided to walk the length of the Ben Franklin Bridge. It's near enough to my building, but still makes for a semi-respectable lunch work out session. Ironically enough, I hate driving on bridges. My palms sweat, I have to be away from the edge in a center lane, and I always feel that when I reach the apex, my car is going to fly off into midair. As a passenger I'm fine. As a walker, I'm okay...I can admire the view, but if I get to close to the edge, the sweaty palms might kick in, depending on the distance to the ground/water.

As I walked, I listened to some music on my iPhone, admired the view, and at one moment, actually had a strange thought...what would happen if an earthquake struck while I was walking along the bridge. Would I be tossed off, to die a horrible death in the Delaware River? (I frequently have very morbid thoughts when I walk alone and am sunk in my own musings.) I wondered if the experience would be similar to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse. (I originally saw this video in high school physics class...it's a classic, though completely unrelated to earthquakes.)

I returned to work from my walk safely, albeit slightly sweaty. About 45 minutes later, while I was sitting at my desk, the building began to shake. The floor beneath me actually felt as if it was going to toss me off of my chair. My first thought...oh shit, the mechanical equipment that lives in the basement below me is exploding. I am going to die at my workstation. Great. Then I realized it was probably an earthquake. This struck me as slightly weird, given my earlier train of thought.

30 seconds of shaking later, I was still alive. I was however, slightly freaked out, and feeling like some sort of clairvoyant.