End of the Land

2009-08-11T13:52:00.000-06:00

So very domestic

2009-05-09T17:54:00.003-06:00

I'm sure my pictures of me making pasta the other month didn't fool any of you into thinking that I've turned domestic. I'm still as apathetic to open a recipe book as ever. I suspect the past couple months of unexplained weight loss (which by the way I am now remedying) has less to do with stress/pseudo-parasite/transition to marriage and more to do with actually having to buy and make my own food.

Reasons I don't like to cook:

1. Too boring to do all by myself
2. Too much effort and time for such few results
3. I actually don't know how very well
4. I don't know what tastes good in the recipe books
5. I never have all the ingredients I need
6. When I cook, I'm never hungry

As you might have guessed, this leaves a frightening position for the my future/current family.
Well, this blog post is to tell you I've found my solution to avoid starvation at last. . . . binge cooking.

Binge cooking is pretty much cooking once a month, a month's worth of meals and then freezing them and eating when so desired in the next six months.

My dear sister Sarah told me about the idea before my mission and I've hung to it as my only hope. Today I finally tried it out with her and her next door neighbor and found it to be an utter sucess.
Pretty much we made 24 meals (8 for each of us) in the last two days. Yesterday we went grocery shopping and did the prep work by cutting up the vegetables and meat and today we just put it all together, cooked it, and put it in plastic bags and those tin foil lasagna thingies in the freezer and we were done.

As for my list of reasons why I don't like cook, all of them pretty much disappeared. While doing this wasn't necessarily cheaper, it is better quality than constant cold cereal and canned green beans as these meals all contain meat. It turned about to be about 5 dollars a meal, but the meals are a family size meal so I think it actually works out to be more meals for Stephen and I so it is probably cheaper).

Anyway I thought I'd share the idea for any of you who just might be to busy to cook every night and want a break now and then.

no matter what your position

2008-08-27T14:10:00.003-06:00

http://www.clermontyellow.accountsupport.com/flash/UntilThen.swf

There's something about war that touches me. No, I'm not into the details of which battle and how many died. Rather the individual stories that seem so interesting. Yes I know these glorified images of army make them out to be angelic while I'm sure they're nothing of the kind. And yet, though they may curse, view pornography, and whatever else---- there is still something compelling about war all the same. Not those that create the wars, but those that fight it. By those who don't fight, who watch, or simply wait for it to be over.

Neide, my Neide

2008-05-30T15:17:00.004-06:00

I’m missing them. I finally have the time that I can sit down and write the people I have needed to write. So I sit and think of what I should write. Something inside me abhors the superficial nothings, yet I am at a loss of what to say. No longer does my life intersect with theirs. I can no longer simply clap my hands and scream "Neide, Neidinha!" and have Neide go to the door with her cane and try and get 2 old chairs from the kitchen to the porch so that we won't see her dirty house (which isn't even dirty) and which we usually end up going and getting the chairs so that she doesn't have to do it herself. To see her smile and pretend she doesn't believe in God, and yet . . . a sadness that I have only had a hint of is deep within her. We never lacked in conversation or laughs together. Sometimes we'd to have to take a taxi in order to get home in time. But now? What can words in a letter mean from someone who is an entirely different world? Do I tell her about my life? Do I tell her how I'm going to be a graduate student? That I won't have to worry where I can live for the next two years? How can I tell her how I go out with friends or family out to eat and spend on a meal what she spends on food for two weeks? How can I tell her that I don't have debt like her 18 year old son will have for the next two years? How I don't have to worry about my mortgage, diabetes, x-husbands, wayward children. I remember explaining to investigators our temporary status as a missionary and said that we would always return to "vida normal" but now I'm back to normal life and I realize that my normal life is nothing like hers and now ours will never even intersect. What can I write? What can I write to the woman who gave me bright red lipstick and said she wouldn’t go to church unless I wore it there?
Do I not write because I have forgotten her and everyone that touched me on my mission? No, they may think I've forgotten, but I remember and can't stand to think how different our lives our and will only continue to be. Write her? Perhaps, but somehow the guilt of the opulence of my life will keep me from her, and in keeping me from her, I am losing her. I have not forgotten people; I’ve forgotten the me that belonged in her world. I missing myself.

andrew wyeth

2008-05-06T08:03:00.004-06:00

Andrew Wyeth has become one of my favorite artists that I've seen on this adventure of mine. I thought I'd share a little of his work.

http://www.andrewwyeth.com/AndrewWyeth2.html

one of the great songs of another time

2008-04-21T19:22:00.006-06:00

This song was originally about the Nazi's:

here is a direct german translation from Wikipedia:

And the shark, he has teeth
And he wears them in his face
And Macheath, he has a knife
But the knife one doesn't see
On a beautiful blue Sunday
Lies a dead man on the Strand
And a man goes around the corner
Whom they call Mack the Knife
And Schmul Meier stays missing
As do some rich men
And his money has Mack the Knife,
On whom they can't pin anything.
Jenny Towler was found
With a knife in her chest
And on the wharf walks Mack the Knife,
Who knows nothing about all this.
And the big fire in Soho
Seven children and an old man
In the crowd was Mackie Messer
Who one doesn't ask and who knows nothing.
And the minor-aged widow,
Whose name everyone knows,
Woke up and was violated
Mack, what was your price?
Refrain
And some are in the darkness
And the others in the light
But you only see those in the light
Those in the darkness you don't see
But you only see those in the light
Those in the darkness you don't see

Here's Louis Armstrong's renditions of Mack the Knife:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=My9B4uQYJn4

This is a little more modern and the guy looks more like a shark

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BeidziNq_Jo

and here's the german version

http://youtube.com/watch?v=iDU_8hnWcbE

and the german version of another of Dad's favorite about the pirate queen Jenny. It's kind of the scary stereotype german for you:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qvDWwm2MHlI&feature=related

here are the german words:

Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne
Und die trägt er im Gesicht
Und Macheath, der hat ein Messer
Doch das Messer sieht man nicht
An 'nem schönen blauen Sonntag
Liegt ein toter Mann am Strand
Und ein Mensch geht um die Ecke,
Den man Mackie Messer nennt
Und Schmul Meier bleibt verschwunden
Und so mancher reiche Mann
Und sein Geld hat Mackie Messer
Dem man nichts beweisen kann
Jenny Towler ward gefunden
Mit 'nem Messer in der Brust
Und am Kai geht Mackie Messer,
Der von allem nichts gewußt
Und das große Feuer in Soho
sieben Kinder und ein Greis -
in der Menge Mackie Messer, den
man nicht fragt und der nichts weiß
Und die minderjährige Witwe
Deren Namen jeder weiß
Wachte auf und war geschändet
Mackie welches war dein Preis?
Refrain
Und die einen sind im Dunkeln
Und die anderen sind im Licht
Doch man sieht nur die im Lichte
Die im Dunkeln sieht man nicht
Doch man sieht nur die im Lichte
Die im Dunkeln sieht man nicht

Finals are ending . . .

2008-04-21T18:31:00.002-06:00

2008-04-17T18:00:00.007-06:00

In a nutshell, sociology attempts to explain/predict an individual's behavior according to the social structures that surround him. Attempting to understand the interaction between agency and social structures will be a lifetime process, and I do not claim to understand even a small part of it now. What I have learned is how every decision we make affect others. We all hold some degree of responsiblity for each other. Even if we will never see each other face to face. Imagine then, the responsiblity that may lay on our shoulders for those withwhom we do interact.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BKxnJ5iyC-w

It's refreshing to hear a song that is addressing social problems and not just another romantic wail.

This song came on while I was listening to myplay.com as I did my homework. The singer reminds me of the inmates when I did my internship at the county jail. More than anything that internship opened my eyes to how normal inmates were. I remember observing a drug-rehab session when a rustic blond guy looked at me and asked, "hey, did you go to Timpivew?" I replied that I did. He had remembered me, but I couldn't remember him.

i see blossoms again

2008-04-15T19:12:00.009-06:00

This is one of my favorites of John William Waterhouse's. It's one of his lesser known works:
"Gathering Almond Blossoms"
This print looks a little too bright and needs more warmth, however it is still makes me want to go outside and gather some of my own blossoms.
I have a small cut-out version on the inside of my scriptures.
I think I love it so much because so many of the girls look like they could be Donaldson's, I'm not biased or anything.
here is a collection of his all his art:
http://www.jwwaterhouse.net/

We think we know everything

2008-04-09T08:21:00.008-06:00

I found this article to be a great summary of the American dilemma:

David C. Berliner's "Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform"

http://epsl.asu.edu/epru/documents/EPSL-0508-116-EPRU.pdf

While his conclusions are perhaps asking much, it’s still a good one.

When I can't sit still

2008-04-09T00:14:00.016-06:00

Alright, so I hate e-mailing people a plethera of wonderful interesting things that they might find better placed in the greatest SPAM of our time. Thus, I am returning the use of my old blog that was used for my mission letters so people can look when they want and have time.

Anyway I can't resist to put up these WWI poems I read for a history class:

The Hero (1917)

Siegfried Lorraine Sassoon (1886-1967)

'Jack fell as he'd have wished,' the mother said,

And folded up the letter that she'd read.

'The Colonel writes so nicely.' Something broke

In the tired voice that quivered to a choke.

She half looked up. 'We mothers are so proud

Of our dead soldiers.' Then her face was bowed.
Quietly the Brother Officer went out.

He'd told the poor old dear some gallant lies

That she would nourish all her days, no doubt

For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes

Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,

Because he'd been so brave, her glorious boy.
He thought how 'Jack', cold-footed, useless swine,

Had panicked down the trench that night the mine

Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried

To get sent home, and how, at last, he died,

Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care

Except that lonely woman with white hair.

The Parable of the Young Man and the Old (1918/1921)

by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned, both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake, and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets the trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Home?

2007-12-26T12:29:00.000-07:00

So they say I'm home now. "They" sure talks a lot about stuff they knows nothing about. It is refreshing, however, to be the good ole clan again. The family eccentricities make for a good time, let's hope the in-laws find it just as amusing.