Heartbroken

We got some very sad news today. Miles has some tumors that are likely cancer. They seem to be growing quickly (we noticed the lumps right before leaving for Thanksgiving) and the test results suggest that they are affecting his liver.

We'll try to be the best pet parents we can be; which for us means to make sure he's comfortable and happy for as long as possible. The vet thinks that some diet changes might reduce the strain on his liver and give him a little more time. It's likely that we won't be entering him in the best housecat competition at the state fair next year. We're both pretty shaken up and sad that we're losing our little furry friend. I don't know how I'll finish all my classes without his help.

Miles at his most content - sleeping

_______________
update 12/4: Turns out that the tumors are definitely impacting his liver. His blood test results show that he has liver damage and maybe some kidney problems (although that could also be due to dehydration). The vet recommends that we try a prescription cat food and a medication that reduces the stress on a damaged liver. None of this will cure him, but it could keep him going a little bit longer before we have to deal with organ failure.

A break

We're off to the Left Coast tomorrow for a few days of break and "rest" (aka running around crazy-like to see friends and family and eat good food).


Someone isn't too happy about our trip.

This is assuming that we can actually get out of the Midwest. We acquired 1.5 inches of snow in a few hours today.

It's cold and blustery out (although 20 degrees warmer than the other day). Let's hope that our flights all leave as planned. We're looking forward to seeing you all very soon.

Wind

As a west coaster through and through, my experience with a range of weather conditions has always been limited. hot, warm, cold, wet dry. Only at the coast did we have weather. And it's memories of weekends and vacations there that come rushing back during days like today. It's not that it's cold today, it's above freezing, it's just so windy.

I remember flying kites with Dad at the beach when I was 14, 15. He'd wrap his arms around me to hold me down as I felt the wind pull the kite and us. We'd have to measure the wind with the little wind gauge to determine which lines to put on the kite (and which kite could handle the wind speed that day). We'd launch kites and fly and it was so great to spend that time together. One of the last things I packed before we moved out here was a kite. My sister and I sat on the floor and tried to decide what to do with them. We sent a special pair to our Coast Friends and my sister and I picked a kite and related equipment each. It's bundled up the closet here, but I should remember it in the spring. It's surely flat enough here to fly it.

Or Dad and I would go fishing out in the ocean or sometimes in the bay. Mom didn't like it when we went in the ocean and we stopped going that far out at some point after the sand started filling the mouth of the bay and it got dangerous. I think some boats capsized even, coming back in against the waves. We'd go early in the morning and spend a lot of time out there. I think back now and wish I had a tape of our conversations out there. I don't remember what we talked about, and I suspect we didn't talk very much. It wasn't really about the talking but the being together and watching the boat rise and fall with the swells, reeling the line in and out, and replacing the bait as the sneaky salmon ate it off our hooks without our noticing. Of course, we caught some too, back in the days when people caught salmon in that bay. We'd catch them and they'd be all slippery and shiny, with their scales shimmering. Of course, then you'd have to bonk them on the head which was never nice but I didn't feel too bad about it, better a quick bonk than slow suffocation was my idea. One time, we had a terribly unsuccessful fishing trip and just gave up. We were outside our normal area and decided to turn our fishing trip into a scenic tour. We drove around and saw different parts of the shore than we normally saw. A whale surfaced oh, 100 yards maybe from us and spewed foul smelling breath. I remember be scared (that thing was probably under us!) and delighted (we saw a whale!) almost simultaneously and I remember Dad looking for the lifejackets, just in case.

I remember our walks to town. It was almost always easier to walk towards town because the wind was at your back. We'd wander into the same 3 stores (with changing names and merchandise). And then we'd head back, against the wind. It was never nice to walk back with the stingy sand and rain against your face.

I remember a crazy walk on the beach with Mom. There's a great photo somewhere. We headed out into an awful storm repleat with ponchos, one orange and one clear. We walked in the rain and the wind with the stormy seas and came home with pockets of sand dollars (we gave those things away to school friends for years). We were soaking wet too as I remember. The fire was always going during the winter at the coast (and the dryer was always running!).

So today, I remember the coast and the wonderful times we had there. There was always a cozy couch to curl up in and read a book (or the special reading nook that Dad made) and a fire and cocoa and my mom and dad and sister. As much as they drove me nuts during my teen years (because I was an annoyingly difficult teen girl more than anything else I'm sure) what I remember now is the time we spent together.

In a few days we'll be home and I cannot wait. I miss them all terribly, although I'm often so busy that I don't have time to notice. It's days like today, when I'm not rushing from place to place and dropping of sheer exhaustion that the memories flood back, triggered by a little wind.

Done (with more to do)

So today is the deadline for my preliminary exam (which around here isn't actually your typical exam - but rather a collection of papers I've written that will be assessed by the department). I finished last night, printed the last piece of paper this morning, and submitted the sucker at 11:00. One whole hour early.

I don't know whether it'll pass, but it is done. I'm am grateful for that. And for my lovely family who listened to me blabber incessantly during those times when I JUST NEEDED TO TALK! And my husband who made lots of dinners (and kick ass waffles for dinner last night YUM). And to my academic friends who actually understood what I was doing and talked me through it all.

This was my desk this morning:
The massive stack of books. The funny (or some other adjective here, I'm too tired of writing to come up with something more appropriate) thing is that I used very few books in my actual writing. The stack of pdf journal articles would be 3 or 4 times more. Sis and I did the math last night and the total set of papers I wrote is about 60 pages.
Here are the final documents, all neatly bundled. Not super impressive looking. And Miles is there in the corner, keeping my chair warm. He contributed a great deal to the writing process.

Kind of Burnt Out

I graduated college almost a decade ago. Since then, I've basically worked 40 hours a a week.

There are things that are tough about 40 hour work weeks: worrying about getting fired, meeting deadlines, appeasing clients, etc. But the one nice thing about work is that, generally, when you're done at 5 (or 6, or whenever), you're done. You go home. You make/eat dinner. Maybe a little tv. Weekends are for wine tasting, or going to the farmer's market, or hiking, or sitting in front of the tv and watching football all day.

Having been back in school now for about 3 months, I remembered the thing I disliked most about being in school all those years ago: you never, NEVER, stop thinking about school. Take a night off? That's fine, just remember, you have that paper due in 2 weeks and, really, shouldn't you be reading/researching? Going to actually take a vacation during during break? Just don't think about that model you need to make.

If you can't tell, I'm pretty ready for a real break. We have the whole Thanksgiving week off, and we're heading back to Portland. I'm going to a Blazers game. We're meeting up with friends. It will be nice. And I will do my best to not think about school stuff the entire time. Well, except for the things I am taking with me for that research paper I need to write.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I'm back - it's really great. I'm just really busy and need a mental break.

Sometimes I think coming back to school was the best and worst decision I've ever made.

Note from the trenches....

Just wanted to tell you all how much I love the KCRW show Sounds Eclectic (A radio station out of Santa Monica). The host Nic Harcourt is responsible for all of my work music listening these days. I heartily recommend it.

We're still alive...

just buried under projects at the moment. We'll come up for air soon.

First snow

Calm

In 2004, The Stranger (Seattle's alternative weekly newspaper) ran this cover after the election. That week was rough for many of us. I remember crying in Prof Poet's office the day after the election. I felt betrayed by my fellow citizens and lost. How could the people in my country believe that our country was going in the right direction? How could they believe that voting for a guy because you could have a beer with him instead of because he is wicked smart is a good idea? Why was the decision for president of the USA resembling the decision for president of the senior class in high school (who's cuter, more popular, not too smart?)?

Today, I am calm. I don't think that our problems are solved because of these election results, in fact, I think we have a long way ahead of us. We (as a nation) need to focus on rebuilding our reputation internationally and collaborate on international problems like the global economy and global warming while simultaneously figuring out how to prioritize and deal with our national problems (health care, the deficit and debt, social security, housing market...) and our local problems too. Obama has a pretty terrible job. But, his speech last night was inspirational and moving.

It's hard to look at the red state-blue state maps and not be worried about the huge gulf in our country. Maps like this one show a stark divide.

2008 red/blue by state

However, maps like this

2008 map by county and population

are much more encouraging (and a little distorted!). The map maker uses population data to resize the states in proportion to their population and uses a scale of red-purple-blue to color county by county, thus the overwhelming amout of red is reduced. Instead of the red state blue state divide, we have lots of purple and some blue and a tiny bit of red. More maps (using electoral college votes, comparisons to 2004 etc) are available from his website.

They do care!

This was my day yesterday. Often, teaching is exhausting and unrewarding. They don't like you, the subject matter, or the whole scholastic enterprise (or at least that's how it can feel from the front of the class). But sometimes you get reminded that they do care (and I've had more than one!). At the very least, they can appreciate the work you do to try to make challenging material more accessible. I'm a big fan of phdcomics.com (Piled Higher and Deeper - what PhD is supposed to stand for, ha ha). It's a humorous but often accurate representation of life here.

Clearly, I'm doing this all wrong

Email I received today:

is an University Degree/Dip1oma holding you Back?
Kindly Call us to inquire about our Degree programs.

Whether You are seeking a Bacheelor, Diploma, M B A /P h D
We can provide you credentials to get you Better career
No exam, study, test, or Courseworks required!

Huh. I guess I'm wasting a lot of time working on this portfolio thing... why didn't they contact me earlier?!?

Voting

I voted in a polling place for the first time in my life on Thursday. The folks who aren't from our Rose State may not realize that Oregon adopted an entirely absentee ballot system a while back. When I first started voting, I registered in my home town and had mom mail me my ballot each year. Then, the state shifted over to the mail in ballot system. I didn't fully appreciate how great mail in voting is until this week.

Square State allows early voting in polling places during a few weeks before election day (they also have an absentee ballot system, but I didn't do that early enough to get it in the mail). They're predicting a huge turnout for election day, so I figured I vote now rather than wait (check out the byline on this story). On Tuesday, I wandered over to the student union to mail a few letters and cast my ballot. The line was so long (more than 30 people and it didn't move the entire time I waited for my stamps) that I got discouraged and decided to wait until later in the week. It's pretty cool that they're having the early voting scattered across campus, so I figured I'd find another time to vote. Today the voting was at the school library. So after I finished teaching, I packed up my stuff and stopped by the library on my way home. I found this line.

I waited to vote for over an hour. The line had DOUBLED by the time I got to the front. I let a few girls go ahead of me as they were trying to vote before running to class (see what a nice teacher I am?!). Anyone who claims that university students don't care this time around are sorely mistaken. I was surrounded by kids who had never voted in an election before. I had a few freshman around me talking about how they were in 9th or 10th grade when Bush got elected the second time. On the one hand, I was so excited to see the turn out. On the other, I'm truly afraid that the local election staff have completely underestimated potential turnout and are unprepared for the crush that will happen. If you remember our posts about voting in the primaries... we completely exceeded anyone's expectations for turnout. These kids were waiting in a line for more than an hour to vote.That's right, 19 year olds were waiting to vote.

Which brings me really to my point when I started this post: voting in a polling place is stupid. I didn't really understand how dumb until today. For our readers who aren't familiar with the Rose State system, let me describe it briefly. Your ballot arrives in the mail along with the state funded voting guide which has the language of all ballot measures, the bios of the candidates, and then paid statements by candidates and supporters/opposition. The League of Women Voters and other groups generally send things out as well. You sit around and read the guide, the newpaper endorsements and figure out who you like. I generally took a few days to vote - voting on measures one day, people another. You had all your materials in front of you while making your decisions. Once you finished, you could either add a stamp and mail your ballot or drop it off at a large number of public ballor boxes (carefully guarded of course). When the state moved to this system, voter turnout increased.

Here, I just had my ballot in my little booth (with no curtain by the way). With all of the news coverage of the presidential election, I had heard no discussion of our local, county, and state choices. I hadn't even heard many of the names. Before I opened my ballot, I didn't even know who/what was up for election here. If I had the ballot at home, I could have done some online investigations, read up about candidates for the hospital board (!), judges, and other random seats. As it was, I didn't vote for any of the candidates. What was I going to do, pick the name I thought sounded "coolest"?

I'll be requesting an absentee ballot from now on, although I need to find out the state's policies on when they count those ballots first I guess.

Voting used to be so easy.

New opportunities!

So, a month or so ago, I applied for a job. Yes, I know I already HAVE a job (a busy one at that) but this job ad came to my email and was just about perfect for me. So, I applied. The job is teaching a class at a small liberal arts college (SLAC) nearby-ish. I'd get to teach a class in my discipline to students actually interested in the subject- how could I pass that up?

They interviewed me Wednesday, the assistant dean offered me the job Friday, and I said yes today.

On Wednesday, I submit a grant for a project in the spring as well. I'm collaborating with a professor in rocket science (not really) and we're working on a plan to buy me out of some teaching time at Farm U to do some cool rocket science meets basket weaving stuff. (Trust me, although I think it's cool, you aren't missing much by my obfuscation).

So, although there's still plenty to do this semester, next is looking pretty exciting! Woo hoo!

Map of Ames

Map of Ames, originally uploaded by pmauro2001.

Our first major review/critique was a week ago. We had to create a drawing/map/collage of the railroad corridor here. Somehow, this is what came out of my research.

My map is showing the growth of the city, which was three-pronged: the city area (where the normal people live), the campus area, and a random third area (in the upper left) that was its own town and eventually annexed into the bigger city.

The streets are made by overlapping the vellum.

The railroad is comprised of a series of pictures of native grasses and plants from the area.

As for a critique/review, that's an interesting process. You stand in front of the class and a few professors and defend your decisions through a series of questions. It's not unlike my old jobs, but somehow more nerve racking.

The final project is approximately 22" x 48" and is on vellum, with ink and Mylar card stock overlays.

Bounty

Wow. Yet another big haul from the garden.



This is the definition of plenty... you can see how I'm running out of space to put the squash. I squished in 5 more after I took this picture... it's getting out of control. Thankfully (but sadly) Peter and Hippie Librarian took down the fence today, so the garden is winding down. We still have carrots, eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes to pick but not much else.

I'm hoping that by keeping the squash in our cool tornado shelter (aka under the stairs storage closet) that they'll last a few months. I mean, I like squash, but this is a LOT of squash. (Especially since you can't see the ones on the top shelf above the canning pot).

This is Getting Ridiculous

At this point, we're basically professional photographers.

This online travel guide, Schmap, apparently loves us. This time, they're used our photo of Galleria Umberto's, pretty much the best pizza in the country. We'll have to upload all our other photos so we can get into the guides for Mexico and other parts of Italy.

Banned Book Week

I almost forgot! It's Banned Book Week! Some easy things you can do...

1. read a banned book
2. visit your local library
3. visit your local book store (independent of course) and buy a book from them. With the economy tanking, I'm sure they'd appreciate it.
4. go to a reading

I'm sure there's more, and maybe you'll let us know what banned books you've been reading or any other events near you!

Deliciousness

There are few things better than a really good tomato.

from our garden!

This is one of them.

tomato, whole wheat toast, pepper bacon from local happy pigs

Tacos

Mmmmm, nothing like a good taco. But, I bet that most of my reading audience has never had a GOOD taco. Oh sure, you've had various tasty things wrapped in a tortilla calling themselves tacos. And I enjoy most of those things as well. But, a GOOD taco is a very different thing.

First, you need to go to a taqueria. As Peter explained, you just need to add -ria to the end of most nouns to get "a place who makes _____". And thus, a taqueria specializes in just that, tacos. At a very good taqueria, you can really only get a few things, tacos, maybe a torta, and a soda or beer. That's it. Taquerias are generally dive-y places, not known for high levels of apparent cleanliness, amenities, or bathrooms (particularly bathrooms). But, you can always tell a good taqueria, it will look like this one in Cuernavaca

Hordes of people waiting outside La Cubana for a taco

Good tacos come from simple ingredients. Many gringos are confused when they first try a GOOD taco because it looks so naked. Just a little sliced al pastor (or tongue or carne asada or chicken or something), cilantro, and onion all served on tiny 3-4 inch corn tortillas with lime and green and red salsas on the side. At a fancy place you might have pico de gallo as well. That's it. No lettuce. No cheese. No sour cream for heaven's sake. Simple and delicious. And you certainly can't eat just one. In fact, I've been known to eat 6 on my very own. MMMMmmmmmm

The best GOOD tacos to get are tacos al pastor. Al pastor is a mysterious meat rotisserie that looks a lot like the gyro or kebab places in Europe. The meat sits all day, slowly spinning as the guy in charge skillfully slices small amounts for you.

The al pastor spinning

And the best place to get them is in Mexico City... down the street from our hotel and next to the chicken rotisserie (mmm another post about that sometime!). At that taco place, we waited for a table to clear (from the 5 available ones), and parked ourselves down and ordered, what else, but tacos. They came, delightfully warm and juicy, right off the spinning al pastor machine, topped with tiny bits of pineapple with the cilantro and onion. At the best places, a whole fresh peeled pineapple is placed at the top of the rotisserie and the juices drip down over the meat, adding to the flavor. And at any place, these tacos are CHEAP! Generally, we found tacos to be between 4-8 pesos a taco (10 pesos=1 dollar). And with a llimited menu, you certainly aren't tempted to upgrade or go "high-end".

I'm missing the al pastor a lot by now. I have a good carnitas recipe, but it's just not the same. When you go to Mexico, you must eat a real taco, it will change your world.

Career Opportunities

While we are consumed by our academic lives, sometimes little things remind you of how easy not having a job/career/commitment can be.

We were recently approached, online of course, to allow the use of one of our pictures from our trip to Italy on an online travel guide known as Schmap. And of course we allowed it. Here's the link to the page.

I think this makes 3 photos that have been published on the internets, which is surprising. Maybe we should have gone into photography?

My Life As a Grad Student Begins

I'm already fairly busy.

I haven't been in school for almost a decade. Any kind of school. Since we moved to Iowa and I left my career in Portland, I decided to go back. I am currently enrolled in a Master's of Architecture program; it's designed for people who have no previous architecture experience - a first professional degree.

As it turns out, several people in my class have experience in interior design. And a bunch have a lot of construction experience. About half of us are returning students, mostly with kids or spouses. The other half are all right out of undergrad. So far it's made for a weird dynamic.

We walked into class the first day and got our first assignment: redesign our entire studio space for 18 students. Go!

We spent the first few days planning, making drawings, talking. Then we started working. One of my fellow students started a Flickr account to document the progress. You can find it here. I'm not in control of it, so I don't know how often it will be updated, but be sure to check it out.

Holy Crap

In previous posts (here) we talked and exclaimed about the vast quantity of produce we were picking from the garden. Clearly, we had no idea what was to come.

Here's our Saturday harvest:

that's our entire kitchen table covered in veggies. Starting at the top left, we've got white (really yellow) and green cukes, a big pile of eggplant, a few hot peppers, yellow crooknecks, green beans, purple beans, green and purple basil, one giant yellow zucchini, a "cheese" squash (so named since they're the color of cheese I guess?), a lonely beet, and in the middle are a pile of Italian peppers and two winter squash.

One day. We also ate a tomato (and a bunch of cherry tomatoes) in the garden and tossed some split melons and wrinkly squash. We've completely abandoned the lettuce (it's super bitter, completely inedible) and most of the herbs (except my basil field) couldn't compete with the weeds.

Still to come, we have tomatoes turning red (finally!) as well as tons of winter squash and melons that look like they're getting close. Thankfully, the garden is not particularly high maintenance at this point (it's rained every few days) and our gardening friends have been willing to do the daily garden checks.

See the rest of Saturday's garden pics here

First Day of School

So, as Peter predicted, posting has been light here. While I've been generally excited to be back in class (yay, friends! yay stuff I'm passionate about!), we've both be swamped. I'll let Peter share his stories here, but let me just point out that I'm teaching a new to me class, taking a class with 2 giant research projects, and working on the portfolio that determines whether or not they'll let me stay for year 3 of the program. So, yeah, busy is the word of the day.

However, we did get some first day of school photos for you.

Here's Peter, all dressed nicely for the first day. He's not holding up his fingers (part of the first day rules) showing which grade he's in because he wussed out.

I'm not holding up my fingers either because we couldn't actually figure out who many I needed... too many...

So, we're hoping that we'll find some time for this here blog (maybe Miles can step in for us?) and looking forward to this year's adventures. One week done already!

The Magic 8-Ball Says...Less Posting in the Future

Tomorrow morning, Kimberly returns to Farm U for the second year of her program. Additionally, after an 8 year hiatus, I will be returning to school to pursue a Masters degree.

Although I am taking more credits than Kimberly, we both have commitments beyond our class schedule. Kimberly will be teaching one class and assisting on another. And somehow, I was assigned as a teaching assistant for an undergraduate class.

On top of that, I have a list of clubs and extracurriculars that I hope to partake in, one of which may or may not be trying to play on the Farm U Ultimate team (can a 30-year old compete with a bunch of 19-22 year olds in a fast-paced sports environment? I might be slightly insane). And I know Kimberly has a stack of school projects to work on, not to mention this small thing called a dissertation to start thinking about and planning.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that things around here are about to get really busy. And as important as this blog is, it is rapidly moving down the list of priorities. So if you thought we were bad about posting our inane thoughts on the internet for the world to read up to this point, prepare to be even less impressed. We'll do our best to keep things up to date, especially on the picture/Flickr account, but I'm just not sure how much we'll be able to post, especially me.

So wish us luck. Especially me. I really think I might be insane.

Red Gold

In PEter's hand there, you can see our very first red tomato. Seconds later, PEter, Librarian Guy and I devoured it.MMMMMMmmmmmm... there's nothing like a warm vine-riped tomato. I know, I know, another garden post? But, you see, until Monday, food is what we have going on.During that trip to get our first tomato, we also harvested this bounty:

You can see giant cucumbers, yellow zucchini, yellow crookneck, white cucumbers, and purple beans. And we're going again tomorrow to pick again. A recipe I made last night with some of the garden produce is over at What We're Eating now...

Anyway, gardening gardening. We have winter squash that are ripening, melons turning colors, and lots of green tomatoes. Unfortunately, by the time the tomatoes are red, we'll both be back in school. I guess we'll have to try to devote an afternoon some Saturday to canning tomatoes. It'll be a good creak from all that studying!

Easiest Indian Ever

My sister bought me 5 Spices, 50 Dishes for my birthday, which was a few weeks back. The book is intended to make Indian easy and accessible, using only 5 spices. The coolest thing is that my sister also bought me huge bags of the 5 required spices (turmeric, coriander, mustard seed, cumin, and cayenne).

Last night, Kimberly and I broke the spine on that book and made ourselves a little Indian feast. We made a turmeric-cayenne cabbage stir-fry, Punjabi-style red beans, and green beef. It was amazing, especially the red beans - they tasted like they had come from a restaurant.

So we're 3 recipes down, 47 to go. Judging from the first attempt, those last 47 recipes will be fun to try.

Is this Heaven...?

No, It's the Iowa State Fair.

It was that time of the year again...time to pack the kids into the giant pick-up truck, grow out the mullet, put on the beer stained wife beater, and head on down to the Iowa State Fair (We only did one of those things; most other people at the Fair do all those things. I kid...Kind of).

U Gotta Love It!!!

I do, in fact, love it. (Did you know that Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote a play set at the Iowa State Fair, and that it was made into a movie? Don't believe me? Well, IMDb doesn't lie. It even won an Oscar for Best Score)

If you'll recall, one of the first things the wife and I did upon arriving in Iowa last year was attend the Iowa State Fair. We were overwhelmed with the selection and quality of deep-fried food on a stick. And the heat/humidity was oppressive. This year, we had a game plan: we eat nothing that doesn't come on a stick.

Generally, the month of August here is hot and humid - people often refer to this as 'Fair Weather' - last year we experienced this, and it was dreadful. Fortunately, this year, the summer has been relatively cool and dry, so we were able to spend 7 hours at the fair, instead of getting tired out after 4 like last year.

The day got off to a great start immediately, on the bus from our parking lot to the Fairgrounds. We got on early, so had seats, but a family of Iowans (or at least Midwesterners) got on towards the end and had to stand and hold on to the straps. They all had on matching shirts and sandals with white socks. Here was their exchange (I'm paraphrasing):

Mom: I feel like I'm in New York City. Except it doesn't smell as bad.
Son: I rode the subway in New York. It was confusing and scary.
Mom: Ya, it's the same way in Boston. I don't know what it is about those subways, but they're terrible.

[Non-Fair related tangent: I was annoyed. First of all, I had on a shirt that said MASSACHUSETTS on it, meaning there's a good chance I resided close to Boston at some point in my life; you probably want to look around before besmirching other people's hometown. Second, nice sandals and white socks; that's a good combo. Third, I've rode the subways in both Boston (often) and New York (once); both were easy to ride, simple to navigate, well-lit, and not scary. Granted, there's usually little or no air-conditioning on those cars in the summer, so there's some smell, but let me tell you this: I'll take that smell over the smell of factory-farm pig stench on a stagnant, humid summer day every time. Fourth: nice matching shirts.

I find this to be one of the more amazing things about people from the middle. A lot of them complain that they are fly-over country, that everyone from the coasts, especially NYC, think they're a bunch of rubes with no culture and live in manure. And they rightly are offended by this. But to then turn around and believe/spread/create rumors about city-folk yourselves is terribly hypocritical. Cities aren't really that scary. The Middle isn't really that backwards. Sometimes, people are stupid. Check that: Most of the time, people are stupid. Back to the Fair.]

Of course, the first thing we did at the Fair was get something to eat: it was 1030 am and we had our game plan to stick to. We headed over to the Iowa Pork Producers and got a Pork Chop on a Stick. In most parts of the world, a pork chop is about 1/2 - 1" thick - a nice size to grill or broil. Here in Iowa, they have a special cut, conveniently called an Iowa Chop, which is usually 2 -3 " inches thick. The stick in this case is nothing more than the bone, but that qualifies to me.

From there, we headed to the Agriculture building to peruse the prettiest vegetable winners,

see the champion pumpkin (another State Fair record),
and of course, the Butter Cow, who this year was accompanied by a Butter Shawn Johnson (and Olympic Gold-medalist) and some other painter guy.

We then stopped for a smoked turkey leg. These things are straight out of the Flintstones. This, along with the cheese curds, pork tenderloin sandwiches, and corn dogs, are one of the staples of the Fair. We weren't impressed: the turkey tasted like ham, which is just weird, and it was really salty. We ate about 1/3 of it and threw out the rest. For us, the giant Turkey leg was 7/8ths hype, 1/8th taste.

On to the Prepared Foods building, where all the canning and cooking competitions were held. We weren't planning on eating anything, but they were giving away free ice cream bars on a stick so we had some of those - a palate cleanser if you will.

Unfortunately, we were somewhat disappointed with the canning displays. I'm not sure if the 500-year flooding event Iowa had earlier this year limited the number of entries, but we were unimpressed. Well, not unimpressed, because there was some pretty stuff, especially the white/green striped canned beans, but underwhelmed. Oh well.

We then circled around to the livestock barns, where we watched a sheep judging competition (kind of boring since they all look alike, although the one woman who was coaxing her sheep along by sticking her hand way far up its butt was pretty interesting), walked down the 'Avenue of Breeds,' where they show off all types of horses, cows, sheep, goats, rabbits, and chicken breeds, and visited with the Biggest Boar (once again, enormously large testicles) winner and his runner-up (in case the winner can't perform his duties). These Boar are so big I don't think they can stand up - two years we've seen them now, and not once has any of them even moved while we were there.

After that, some more deep fried wonderfulness. This time, we went simple and decided on fried, battered cheese curds. Honestly, these may be the best food ever invented. I could eat 10 million of them and never get bored. (Technically, the cheese curds aren't on a stick, but it doesn't matter, we made an exception. Trust me, if you ever have tried a deep fried, battered cheese curd, you understand what I'm talking about)

We then went to something new: the 'This is how a Real Farm Works' Building. In this building, they had arranged for various animals to give birth every day of the Fair. Since we went towards the end of the Fair, most stuff had already been born, like the piglets, cows, and goats (baby goats are very adorable, and pretty funny looking). There were also chickens hatching and baby ostriches, as well as ostrich eggs still incubating. And just for fun, while we were there, they were spaying a dog in front of a live audience; I thought this would be kind of gross and cool to watch, but it was terribly boring.

This building may have been our favorite part of the Fair this year. This entire building was basically saying: "Hey City /Suburban folk. The food you eat, it starts out really cute. Then we kill it and eat it. Deal with it. Its the Circle of Life." We weren't able to witness a live-birth, but we got the point.

As were leaving this awesome new building, we ran into some friends. We sat with them as they snacked on some cheese curds, a deep fried Milky Way, and deep fried pineapple; we also had deep fried pineapple, which of course comes on a stick (after re-reading that last sentence, I think we qualify as Iowans. We saw people we knew at the State Fair and shared fried food on a stick with them. Sounds like Iowa to me)

After that, the day took a bit of a turn for the weird. First, we took part in a popcorn poll, where you got a kernel of corn and put it in a jar for the Presidential candidate you were supporting. As we were going through the line, the guy behind us said '10 out of 10 terrorists support Obama.' We were pretty upset by this comment, and said something to the fine gentleman who said it. I don't really care who you vote for (well, I actually do - Barack the Vote!), but that kind of comment, based on rumor-mongering, really has no place in a real discussion on the merits of our future President. It made us sad.

We then entered the Varied Industries building. Back in the day, this was the place where farmers could check out the newest products for both the farm and home. Now, it's filled with sauna salesmen and political booths. It's pretty weird. There was an Anti-Evolution booth; I'm sure these people mean well, but to argue that humans co-existed with dinosaurs (and possibly even rode them like horses) is a pretty funny concept. I think we actually laughed out loud when we saw this booth. After passing a few anti-abortion booths, we decided it was time to go. It was starting to get hot, and we were tired.

On the way out, Kimberly stopped to get the gigantic-ist ice cream cone I've ever seen from the Iowa Dairy Association; she asked for a double scoop, but somehow ended up with 4 scoops. It was pretty insane.

I took a little detour to see the 'Super Bull,' in this case an albino looking thing, also with gigantic testicles. When I walked in, it was lying on its side. After a few seconds, it stood up with a speed that was very impressive for an animal of its size - me and the kid next to me jumped backwards as he turned towards us, despite the fact he was behind a fence. He also had a nose piercing (a bull ring, if you will), which made him look super scary.
I would not want to be the guy at Hawkeye Breeders that does this job:

And after that, another year at the Fair was over. While we ate a good amount of food, we skipped the pork tenderloin sandwich, which are supposed to be fantastic. And the Beef Sundae (like an ice cream sundae, but not at all like an ice cream sundae). And a Fried Twinkie on a Stick. And, sadly, the corn dogs. but we need to save something new to try for next year.

As for next year, we'll be even more prepared, and we're hoping to become more active participants in the Fair Experience. We're planning on entering Miles into the 'Best House Cat' competition (again, not joking); not to put too much pressure on the little feline, but I'm pretty sure he's going to win. I'm also hoping to submit some sunflower heads into the 'Largest Sunflower Head' competition; after sizing up this year's winners in person, I'm pretty sure we could compete. There's also a handful of 'Prettiest' vegetable competitions I think we could compete and place highly in, it just kind of depends on how early we can get our crops in the ground and get some fruit to ripen.

If I were you, I'd start planning my vacation for the 2009 Iowa State Fair right now. Just hope that we don't have Fair Weather.

[Check out all the pics on Flickr]

In a Pickle Now

The Hippy Librarian and I were reading over the seed packets for our garden the other day. The Bush Cucumber, which is the standard green cucumber we are growing, is described as a 'good' producer. The white cucumber we are growing is described as a 'very good' producer. We thought this was a pretty good explanation as to why we're been picking somewhere around 10 pounds of cucumbers a week. And things have barely just started.

Since we were blessed with this bounty of cucumbers, and half of them were lying in our fridge, slowly rotting, we decided it was time to act. So what to do with a ton of cucumber? Why, make pickles, of course.

A couple years back, Kimberly, her mom, Sissy, and I made Spicy Dill Green Bean Pickles. Besides some early memories of my family canning tomatoes in the Old Country when I was young, I had never preserved foods in this way before. It was surprisingly fun. When we left Portland, Mom-K was kind enough to supply us with a canning pot, which is basically the giant-ist pot possible, with a metal rack in the bottom for raising and lowering the jars.

With the aid of the Hippy Librarian and the Iowa Farm Boy, and of course, the Ball Corporation Bible of Canning, we went at it. It was surprisingly easy to do - wash some stuff, cut some stuff, follow a recipe, cook the jars for a while. Since I was in charge, we made Dill Slices with the green cucumbers, perfect for burgers and sandwiches and such. We ended up with 6 pints.

Since we still had a ton of the white cucumbers left the next day, Kimberly and I decided we might as well pickle them too, so they don't just go bad. 6 more pints.


So, as you can see, we now have 12 jars of Dill Pickles. Hippy Librarian and Iowa Farm Boy will be taking some, but we'll probably end up with the majority of them. But that's fine with me, because I love me some Dill Pickles.

Eugene Ate All My Sunflower Seeds

See that up there? That's the first sunflower head I harvested from our front patio. Although you can't really tell from that picture, it's gigantic. After it dries out for a while, I'll pop out the seeds, salt them, and roast them for some homemade sunflower seeds.

In the following picture is the trunk of the sunflower. Again, there's not much scale, but that thing is as wide as Kimberly's arm.

And finally, here's the current state of the sunflower garden. With the upcoming insanity, this may be the last post regarding the sunflowers. All that will happen from this point on, regardless, is that the sunflowers will fall over, I'll chop off the heads, and roast them for seeds.

But on the bright side, those big sunflowers are at least 10 feet tall, which is pretty impressive. We're definitely winning the Fair sunflower contest next year.


ps If you know Eugene, tell him I will have more sunflower seeds soon, and if he wants, I'll send him a jar. I just need his address.

A Midwest Odyssey

[Somehow, this post got to be almost as long as Homer's Odyssey. Sorry about that.]

As some of you may have noticed (read: our mothers), we haven't posted in a while. Since we got back from Mexico, we've been busy with the garden and preparing for school, which starts in exactly a week. I've also been traveling all over the Midwest.

Two weekends ago, I was invited to play in a weekend Ultimate Frisbee tournament in Madison, Wisconsin with a team from Des Moines. I knew most of the people who were playing on the team, and had never been to Madison, so I decided to go. While the 4-1/2 hour drive was a little tedious, the tournament was a lot of fun. The weather in Madison was perfect, the team I played with was filled with some really talented players (including the best male and female players in the State of Iowa, as regarded by people who know more than I do), and everyone was really fun. We crashed at a friend of a friend's house, covering almost the entire floor space and spent a night eating and hanging out in downtown Madison, which is the state capitol and location of the University of Wisconsin. I could see us living in Madison some day. We ended up finishing 5th in the tournament, which was a pretty good outcome for us, based on the competition.

Two days after I returned from Madison, Kimberly and I drove to Kansas City, where the Red Sox were playing the Kansas City Royals. One month ago, if you had asked me, I would have had almost no opinion of Kansas City; I just never thought about the City, nor did I think I would ever visit it. I remember when I was little, I was always scared of the Royals because they had George Brett and Dan Quisenberry, but that's all I knew of the City.

We were very pleasantly surprised. KC is a pretty old city that is going through some urban revitalization. There are cool, funky, Portland-esque neighborhoods, with good restaurants and cool old buildings. The housing stock was cute, and a lot of the old warehouse buildings are being converted into apartments and condos.

The quantity and quality of the restaurants was also surprising. Of course, KC is known for its BBQ, and it didn't disappoint. We ate at Arthur Bryant's, which is considered one of the 2 best places in the City. I wanted to buy some BBQ to take home, but Kimberly nixed that idea.

Additionally, a chef I worked with here used to be a chef in KC, and gave us some great restaurant recommendations. In one place, we drank real coffee (not Iowan coffee, which can best be described as strong tea) while eating one of the best brunches we've had since leaving Portland at a place called Rm 39. It turns out that the 2 waitresses at this place also were thinking of moving to Portland, so they kept coming by to refresh our coffee just so they could have an excuse to keep asking us questions.

The Royals stadium was also a nice place to watch a baseball game, which is a bonus. As seems to be the case for most Red Sox away games these days, the stadium was over half full of traveling Red Sox fans. This makes sense: the price of airfare, a hotel, and tickets to all 3 games in KC is probably cheaper than going to 3 games at Fenway these days.

Kansas City has some glaring negatives, like the lack of public transportation and the lack of bike-friendly streets, but I could see us living in Kansas City some day.

To add to the insanity, two days after getting home from KC, we drove to Chicago, where one of Kimberly's friends from Portland was visiting her in-laws. Additionally, my brother-in-law-in-law (alternately, my brother-in-law once removed. He's my brother's wife's brother) lives in Chicago, so we visited him as well.

We spent a brisk 36 hours in the City, having a wonderful lunch with my in-law and his girlfriend. He gave us a tour of his downtown apartment, which was pretty awesome, and we walked along Lake Michigan on a picture perfect day.

Later on, we met Kimberly's friend and husband at The Original Gino's East, a legendary deep dish pizza place located kind of near Wrigley Field. They have just recently returned from living in Chengdu, China for a year, so we spent the time catching up and listening to some pretty crazy 'living-in-China' stories.

We really enjoyed our short time in Chicago; it's a great City that seems really livable. With the perfect weather and good company, it was a great weekend. I could see us living in Chicago some day.

Finally, this past weekend, I went to another Ultimate Tournament, this time near Milwaukee, a short 6 hour car drive. I played with team of random people, most of whom were from Denver, but who also came from Seattle, Indiana, and Chicago. While still a good time, this tournament wasn't as fun as the first in Madison. But I did get to experience some beautiful countryside outside of Milwaukee, and more perfect weather.

Over the 2 weeks, I spent approximately 38 hours traveling around by car, covering approximately 2500 miles. That's far.

The one thing I learned/realized these past couple of weeks is that the Midwest is a place of 2 extremes: the City and the Country. The whole state of Iowa is definitely 'country', despite the best efforts of Des Moines (in my travels, this is also true of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and South Dakota). Iowa is 90% cornfields, with a few small cities that are decent but isolated (Iowa City, Ames, Dubuque, Des Moines). The places we visited are capital-C Cities, with a lot to offer, even Madison; although they are surrounded by farm lands, they don't feel so isolated, because the City is big and vibrant. Considering I grew up in a place where the City didn't really ever end until you drove a few hours, the capital-C city model seems more comfortable.