By way of a beginning, I will briefly summarize my interests and why I chose to start this blog. I do not really want it to descend into my personal rant space, but I’m hoping it will encourage me to write more serious things, things related to current events, or well, just anything other than “I, I, me, me, I, me, I, me, me, me, my, oh, my, I.”
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I modified this recipe from the back of the can of Near East Tahini. It is very good on broiled garlic bread (nice crusty bread, a drizzle of oil, a sprinkle of cheap and ubiquitous garlic salt). Or you can dip crudites in it. I used to think crudites were fancy bread things, but really they are just vegetables. Broccoli is particularly good with this hummus. (Give it a light steam to brighten it up.)
about 1 head of garlic or whatever you can stand–more is definitely better–chopped fine in a food processor
then add:
1/3 c. tahini
1/4 c. lemon juice
1/4 c. water
and pulse until smooth.
Add to this:
1 can 20 oz or so, drained chick peas
1 - 2 t. cumin
1 T. Frank’s Red Hot
Start processing, drizzling extra virgin oil in while it blends–until it is relatively smooth and creamy.
Share it, because you won’t want to be the only one with Dragon Breath.
Filed by Susan at 10:51 am under Scrawl
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It has been exactly one week without coffee. The last coffee I had was on Monday, October 17. I’m still getting caffeine though, from the nineteen cups of green tea I drink each day–okay, there I go again, really it amounts to about four big mugs. I realize I have not really had much water in the last week–perhaps that is why all my aches and pains are still with me.
I give up coffee from time to time. I have this belief that it is the root of all my bodily woes. Also, I have a small hiatal hernia and coffee really irritates it. One time a year or so ago I gave it up, and whoosh, in a matter of days all my little aches and pains, and my stomach problems–they VANISHED.
This time my aches aren’t leaving so quickly. Of course, I think the last time I gave up coffee I also gave up sugar and beer, wine, all the bad things. This time I only gave up coffee. Yesterday I ate about 20 Oreo cookies. (It really is America’s favorite cookie!) This is not an exaggeration–I didn’t eat the whole package though, so I guess that’s good.
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Filed by Susan at 7:51 am under Scrawl
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I was at the supermarket a few days ago, in the natural foods aisle, looking for my favorite aseptically packaged soymilk (really makes it sound appetizing, eh? Aseptic makes me think of sanitary napkins, actually–I don’t know why) when I saw the “splashy new packaging” on Imagine Foods’ Soy Dream Original Enriched soymilk. My heart sank.
You know they never put splashy new packaging on something unless they added something to it that they’re trying to, well, cover up.
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Filed by Susan at 9:52 am under Scrawl
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It’s that time of the month of again. Don gets paid every two weeks, and every two weeks I open the spreadsheet that saves our sanity and look at which creditor gets what this time. I squander his whole paycheck, if you will. I’m rather unyielding about this. He quibbles–”where did all that money go?”
Well, honey, let’s see. There is the killer refinance we did on the house to consolidate our colossal debt–the mortgage payment crept up a couple of hundred–but then, I got smart about amortization. I started crunching numbers. If we put an extra $800 a month toward the mortgage, we could pay it off in SIX years, as opposed to 15. This is something desirable since I will be 56 in 15 years and Don will be 64. I would rather be 47 and have Don be 55 when we finally own this financial sinkhole.
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Filed by Susan at 10:08 am under Scrawl
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A few years ago Don and I sat around coming up with pat answers to the zingers that are usually flung at you from a serenely judgmental face across the job interview desk: “Tell me about your weaknesses.”
Well, let’s see. I have a tendency to work too hard. I am a perfectionist. Oh, wait, here you go: Sometimes I get so wrapped up in my work I forget to go home.
Then there’s this one: “Please explain these gaping holes in your resume.”
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Filed by Susan at 2:25 pm under Scrawl
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What does a yoga teacher dream about?
For a while, it was a class packed with students, but then the music wouldn’t play, or they wouldn’t quiet down, or you just couldn’t pull it all together, while minutes ticked by, and before you knew it, they started to trickle out, disgusted that class hadn’t started yet–15, 20, 25, 30 minutes late. You can’t get it all pulled together at the top of the mat. You grow desperate and panicky.
That was yoga nightmare number one.
Now for the yoga dream:
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Filed by Susan at 7:53 pm under Scrawl
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I’ve been impaled. I mean, impaneled.
So, let me tell you what it’s like. First, you sit around with about 90 other people in a very hot and stifling room, while Chia Pet (cripes, who knew THEY were still around?) ads blare on the telly and everyone except the bookish ones stare at it vacuously. On top of this is the national anthem of some tiny unknown eastern European country trumpeting triumphantly on the court employee’s computer, and God knows how she can even concentrate, because immersed in this cacophony she sits calmly chatting on the phone with someone, and taking notes. Her shoulder walkie-talkie thing crackles and demands.
Up to Superior Court we all trundle.
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Filed by Susan at 3:00 pm under Scrawl
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“Wear a hat! Zip up your coat!”
How many mothers cry this out as a child dashes out the door?
When I woke this morning, I let the dogs out–and they raced through the thick fall of snow, gleefully peeing on the birdfeeder pole, and then Buddha peed on his new favorite spot–the front door (outside the front door, I mean.) They came in for their cookie, their breakfast, and now they are piled up on one another in front of the space heater.
So I got online and checked CNN.com, where the big story, or at least one of the big stories, is this very storm. A Southwest Airlines jet skidded off the runway at Midway International Airport in Chicago and took a nosedive into a six-year-old kid sitting in a car, crushing him. Several others were injured–the plane slid into a busy street. The airport was shut down indefinitely, finally deferring to the greater strength of nature but elsewhere, people continued to go about their normal lives, I guess that’s what you’d call it, ignoring their environment. The article was a virtual catalog of foibles that would be funny if people hadn’t died.
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Filed by Susan at 9:32 am under Scrawl
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The Nikon D200. Some people have pre-ordered two or three of them. I get on listservs and the like and it seems like people from Malaysia to Stockholm to Eugene, Oregon, are waiting. I called Camera World and they offered to preorder it for me. I would be number 3001 on the waiting list. This would be okay if they were getting 6000 units, but one guy on some blog or something said he was in at 31 on the pre-order wait, and they told him he wouldn’t be in the first wave of deliveries.
All I can say is I sure hope Nikon is banging out these units. I hope there is a boatload or a planeload or a whatever load of three million units headed straight for B&H Photo. I am not sure there has been another item so hotly lusted after–or at least there is no item I have so hotly lusted after, as this is. Some years ago, leafing through a Cosmopolitan magazine, I saw an ad for a really cool cross-training sneaker–Nikes–and I called up Goff’s Sports in Williamstown, and they talked to their distributor and then told me the sneakers were not even in production yet. I was devastated. See, back then I was a real sloth. I never exercised. But that image of those sneakers gave me the push. Also, right under them it said, “Just do it” and it should have said also, “dammit” or “you loser” or “you lazy lima bean.”
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Filed by Susan at 4:07 pm under Scrawl
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