I mostly followed Thomas Boutell's recipe posted on OPW a few months back. Except I did not have wheat flour so I subbed in white.

Bread came out fine. Not excellent, but fine. The crust was great. The flavor was not as complex as I'd like. I'm guessing that was the lack of wheat flour? Kid loved it, but she has boring taste buds.

I make bread the "old fashioned" way sometimes. And this recipe just feels weird - what, no fat? 450 oven!?! No second rise?? But it certainly is easy.

I imagine I will make it again. But I'll let the dough sit (in the fridge) a few days to develop more complex taste. Maybe use honey instead of sugar. And likely also encourage a second rise - I.e. remove it from fridge, shape & let sit a few hours before baking. Also, I'll use the wheat flour per the recipe (assuming I remember to buy some)

I'll add photos once I figure out how

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Drop "Seekrit" from the above and you have the essence of the matter.

Dramatis Ingredienti

4-6 avacados
1 tomato
1 onion
a truly excessive amount of garlic (3-4 cloves)
salt (~1 tsp)
black pepper (~1 tsp)
cayenne pepper (~1 tsp)
cumin (~1 tsp) - optional
tabasco (~2 tsp?)
lemon juice or lime juice (~2 tsp) - I usually use lemon

Use a largish bowl. Dice the first three items on the list, and finely chop or press the garlic. Put everything on this list in the bowl and mix thoroughly. The avacado will be somewhat mashed, but I leave it fairly chunky.

Chill for 30 minutes. You don't HAVE to drink or run a tabletop game during this step, but I find that it helps.

Serve with whatever tortilla chips you've got. I usually use either Tostitos Scoops or Tostitos Hint of Lime.

Eli has been known to use spinach leaves in place of chips, as he is on a low-carb diet. Also great as a spread on a sammich or spooned onto an omelet.

Another introspection oversharing post.

I'm in a mood. A worn, tired, drawn mood. Maybe even a funk.

I've been retired not quite a year. I've explored and partied. I have been raising my kid. I've made a friend or two, and a whole lot of new acquaintances. I would have thought my house would be cleaner. I would have thought my yard would be a showpiece of stellar landscaping. Apparently a clean house and a fine yard are not of enough interest that I actually achieve them.

I'm bored. This life of careening from party to party, grounded in between with raising a spirited kindergartener is grand. Enviable even. But I need something more. My party schedule for the next 6 weeks is a Iberican Sound DJ show in DC, a Mad Max theme ball outside Los Angeles, a Bowie ball in Raleigh, NC. A luxury hotel art something something in Norfolk. Yes, I'm bragging a bit. This part of life is good.

On Monday I texted my brother, who lives outside of DC. And said "Let's have dinner tomorrow!" I also texted my cousin and said "Let's have drinks tomorrow!" I texted a friend as I got in the car Tuesday and said "Let's have a wine!".  I drove the 2 hrs to DC. My brother then canceled on me - he had developed the flu. 

As I get to the friend's house outside DC with 2 bottles of wine, there is a school bus parked in the driveway. And 11 beautiful people get out, just back from a roadtrip to Miami. It was oddly a 60 degree February day, so we sat on the patio with a revolving door of beautiful people and drank our wine. There was also Korean food. And then my cousin showed up and we went to dinner at the brewery. And I get back to my place outside DC and my landlord & a friend are there drinking beers. We watch Sita Sings the Blues. I sleep at midnight. What a lovely Tuesday I think to myself - the type of Tuesday I could never have had if I wasn't retired.

Then Wednesday was a similar day of family & friends, ending with me driving home after BBQ and hanging by a firepit. I stop at a local watering hole as I roll into my hometown. And have a wine or two, then it was 1AM. A lovely Wednesday I would not have had, if I wasn't retired.

So I'm in a funk. I get the blahs after great social interactions as a matter of course - part of my introverted brain being out of happy. Plus the slight hangover doesn't help. And it's a full moon besides. And I'm bored.

One reason I wanted to dine with my brother because I'm thinking about solving my boredom by buying a 230year old mansion. It needs someone to love it. I would make no money at it (though I likely wouldn't lose much money either.) It is huge, and needs a lot of renovating/restoration. A challenge of proportions that seem to leave the men in my life shaking their heads and thinking I'm crazy. The women in my life, on the other hand, are encouraging and think I should go for it. I wanted to talk to my brother because we have similar money sense. But alas, he had the flu.

In years past, I used to get into these funks and attributed them to stresses of my job. Or I'd think the funk was due to a disappointing romantic entanglement. Or a lack thereof. Now I know it’s just me. I get into funks. Even if life is perfect.

I have a blissfully unplanned weekend of being Mama looking me in the face. I can go back to being bored on Monday.

On the night of the Tony Awards, Matt heard that they had released a big block of Hamilton tickets, and by some miracle, they weren't eleventy-billion dollars. Matt nabbed two, and we're going this Wednesday night.

Matt and I are the only two living souls who have never heard a single song from Hamilton. I can't quote any lines, I can't tell you what it's about other than what I remember about Alexander Hamilton from history class, which ain't much.

We've kept the fact that we have tickets (NO Autocorrect, not "rickets") quiet, because we got tired of people telling us, often quite forcefully, how we should prepare for attending the show. 

• "Make sure you listen to the whole show a bunch of times and read the lyrics simultaneously, because you'll never catch it all in the theater."
• "Absolutely do NOT listen to it beforehand. Just peruse the lyrics so this way when you hear them you'll recognize them and you'll understand it better."
• "Read the plot synopsis online!"

• Etc etc etc etc etc.

So we decided that we would go in totally cold. Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote it for people to enjoy on opening night, before there were cast recordings and Wikipedia entries and obsessive tumblr accounts.  So I will attend with open ears, hoping to catch as much as I can, knowing I won't catch it all. I will trust that the creators created something I can follow.  I will trust that the director directed it well, and I will trust that the actors will have good diction.  

"And dat's eet."

      (-- Mike from The Ham Fam.)

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(x-posted to livejournal.)

I am marching in Seattle today, along with an anticipated 30,000 people. Wearing a turtleneck, carrying shelf-stable milk for teargas, throwing knives strapped to my thighs...just kidding about that last. We're taking kids. Anticipating good behavior from both Seattle Police and the demonstrators, barring agent provacateurs and the King County Sherriff's office going off. The parade route will not be hemmed in, so latecomers can join in at several different access points, and I can peel off whenever I hyperventilate. I think this will be grounding for me though, particularly the earlier, silent portion of the walk. Better than frothing at the mouth on social media. 

About today:

In 2008 (and please correct me if I'm letting nostalgia color things with a warmer palate than deserved), those of us on the left were proud not just because we won after 12 years of conservatism, not just because we proved that when your candidate is brilliant, erudite, and - y'know, cool - he could win an election even if his skin tone was brown, his hair tight and curly, his name dangerously Middle Eastern, and his opponent a beloved, universally admired hero of war (with, granted, conveniently horrific taste in running mates). 

No, we were most proud of Obama's victory because we believed it was a victory for America. For all Americans. Yes, we were too quick to dismiss some of his detractors as unable to see past his skin color and background (while this was true of some, the generalization backfired greatly). But even to them, we said: look, this is the one. This guy is here for you, too. You don't have to worry. He's one of us, and he's going to make you better off too. Everybody chill the fuck out. He's got this.

Nobody is saying this about the new guy. 

Today, it's "better run, Muslims. Get outta town, illegals." And to liberals, those "snowflakes," they have one word:

                                                       Or is that two?

The happy people are at their happiest when they're rubbing it in the faces of the losers. That's right, go cry, losers! You sad, pathetic - when will the right figure out how idiotic they sound when they use "snowflake" as a pejorative? Geez, conservative Twitter has more snowflakes than Fargo. They have 80-gallon drums of "liberal tears" too, and...ah, you know the details. You've seen them. The variations are limited, to say the least.

Shortly after the election, a conservative (but staunchly anti-Trump) friend of mine contacted his liberal friends personally. He told them he knew they were upset, but he didn't want us to worry - he truly believed everything would be all right. Before you get angry at him for not getting past his white male privilege, at least join me in appreciating his intent. He knew we were hurting, and he wanted to help, even if he didn't know how. Even those of us who are LGBTQ, African American, Latinx, disabled, or otherwise in the crosshairs of the new administration appreciated his attempt at being a friend.

Thing is, it didn't last. His patience wore thin. He started lashing out at those who bemoaned the Electoral College, who took to the streets in protest, who refused to ever accept the winner as "my president." He started painting us all in the same strokes as the most radical, hateful "liberal" he could find - if some jerk wrote that he wished the new guy would have a heart attack, we all wished it. That sort of thing. He started taking delight in posting deliberately provocative missives and responding "get over it" (and "get used to it") when we protested. In short, he, like nearly every conservative on social media, enjoyed our loss far more than his victory. 

And so it goes. Snowflakes. Liberal tears.

Granted, some people really do want this particular guy in charge. Sure, some peeled off when the campaign promises that pushed them to vote 'R' vanished like rice paper in a volcano, but many cannot wait for the new rules, whatever they may be. Another faction doesn't want the new guy to succeed, exactly - what they want is to tear the whole thing down (riots, Martial Law, the works), forcing us into a governmental do-over that omits key phrases like "all men are created equal" and the 19th Amendment. Their guy won, too.

Look in the bios of these folks, and you see the same thing. They "drink liberal tears." (Another one.) They can't wait to restore law and order. Watch out, liberals and gays oh wait that's redundant (haw haw!). There aren't many variations on this, so it gets boring quickly - the only game is to see who is willing to use full-on racial, homophobic, misogynist slurs, and who isn't. (They're all willing to use offensive memes.) You lose, losers. All lives matter, but not yours.

The spirit of 2008 is gone. These folks aren't the least bit interested in communicating that the country is better off for everyone, that the new guy has good ideas for all of us, that we'll be okay and everything will be all right. 

Maybe they're just being honest. Maybe they know that while they'll be all right, we certainly will not be. Which means they really did win. And man, did we ever lose. 

A friend wants to know how performers can "discriminate" against the inauguration and still expect the proverbial wedding cake baker to make a cake for two people with the same junk if they think that's an abomination.

First, yes, antidiscrimination laws do take away a freedom. It's a shitty little freedom, a vigorously poop-coated freedom. But it's a freedom nonetheless. And so they aren't passed lightly.

They are passed when there's a longstanding history of bigotry, of disenfranchisement, of suffering and discrimination vastly out of proportion to the "suffering" imposed by being forced to carry out your customary business for anybody with the dollars. We limit the freedom to refuse someone's custom only in certain very narrow circumstances.

That's good, right? You don't want any more government interference than necessary, right?

Now you may argue that the United States has a long and proud history of discrimination against racist, sexist, narcissistic, habitually lying sacks of human excrement which needs to be remedied. And I would argue that, sadly, you are wrong about the first four, all five are self-imposed and nothing has ever been denied to people in any of these categories. Nothing. Sadly. Ever. So what remedy would you make?

But even supposing you're right: starting Friday, we have one hell of an affirmative action program for human sacks of excrement. So there's that settled.

I have honestly never been that into my lashes - even now that there is a lash extension place on every block - but OMG - I started using LashBoost and I am officially OBSESSED!!  Hands down, my favorite thing - get yours here 

I'm resurrecting my account after a long hiatus. It looks like the community has grown so much over the last two years and I'm excited to connect with some new OPWs.

Interesting that the "inspiration" for today's post is the question, "What's your favorite country, other than your own?"  That's a tough question because countries have so many different beautiful things to offer.  The country I'm most connected to is Jamaica because that's where I do my research, which brings me to my next thought...

I am on research leave for the first time this semester.  This is a huge opportunity that rolls around once every 6 or 7 years based on merit. Truthfully, I'm a little burned out from working toward tenure in a contentious environment, trying to support and enrich my students, trying to maintain a research agenda without the time needed  as an ethnographer to truly conduct the kind of fieldwork I was able to while working on my dissertation research, and balancing family life, feeding myself, etc.

At the moment, I am technically still on January break and allowed myself time to do nothing guilt-free for the week after New Year. Now I'm trying to stave off the flood of thinking that leads me down the path of "you might squander this semester if you don't pay attention".

This is, in part, one of the reasons I'm rekindling my account.  It's a space of simplicity, whereas Facebook is a space of over-stimulation and Twitter is a space I only visit to witness users trolling The Donald. I think this might be a good space to think through and track life on research leave. To the other academics out there, this is my "low stakes writing assignment" where I can freely regroup and freely think outside of evaluative structure.  Here we go...

Goals for leave:

IRB

Revise and submit two conference papers as articles

Launch new research project by making contacts, preliminary interviews, sussing out who will be willing to participate and who might not be.

Based on the ease of the "launch" dig into deeper fieldwork or rethink strategy