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Serves 4 to 6

Four to six what?

I'm making this vegetable stew. About the same time I realize I'm going to end up with two gallons of the stuff, I also realize that the recipe reads like a list of Oz's least favorite vegetables. Okra! Zucchini! Sweet potatoes! Green beans!

Hmm. I'm going to have to buy more storage containers.

I wonder if my landlady likes okra, zucchini, sweet potatoes, and green beans.

I can't even give the excess away at work. I mean, sure, cake and pie disappear in no time, but okra? Not going to happen.

Unless I hide the stew under pie crust …

Apocalypse of snow

Not.

So very, very not.

As usual, I dismissed all the wishful thinking cleverly masked as dire warnings. Then, on Friday night we saw the ring around the moon, impressive and suggestive of heavy weather (the math, more photos). The only other time in my life that I saw the moon ring, a huge thunderstorm hit the following night. (I was camping at the time. While we listened to the thunderstorm hammer down outside, the Princess and I congratulated ourselves on having given up on the swampy little pup tent and gone to sleep in her dad's van instead.)

So what horrendous weather rolled in after the moon ring?

A day-long flurry. Yes, it snowed for a whole day and looked pretty in the process, but a minor accumulation of slush on grassy areas just doesn't say "winter storm" to me.

It was still too cold to go outside, so I played with my camera inside.

Sparky by speedlight

Oz got me some gels to help with color correction on the flashgun. Here I've got a tungsten gel (to compensate for light bulb light) on the flash and the white balance on the camera set to tungsten. The result? A kitty with a healthy golden glow and the daylight from the window behind him blued up quite nicely. It was actually bright and sunny outside.

Time continues to fly by. I still have my job. I seem to be getting used to it (in that I am still employed, still able to get myself to the office every day, still interested in what I'm doing). I'm liking the benefits and the steady paycheck. I get days off and my paycheck stays the same. I can make financial plans based on the expectation that the money will show up when it's supposed to. When you're self-employed, you base your plans on the money not showing up and a day off is always a day without pay.

One thing that is hard to get used to is being indoors all day. Leaving home in the dark and returning home in the dark. But it's already starting to get lighter. The last couple weeks I've been able to enjoy winter sunset clouds on my way home. And from one of the windows in the office I can glimpse the Washington Monument turning pink when the sun is hanging out at the horizon. I'm only going to be in this particular office till April, so I'll enjoy the windows and the view while I can.

My trainee group was tops in production for the quarter, so we got swag. They didn't give us swag when we started up. I guess it's cheaper to wait and then give the swag to just ten percent of the incoming trainees. We got a mug and a lapel pin with the organization seal. Pretty minimal swaggage. The mug has a flared top. Yeah, basically they rewarded us with dribble cups.

Am I in a Dilbert cartoon yet?

NHK makes tame, ghastly family entertainment tamer, ghastlier

TV viewers shocked. No one thought that was possible.

After last year's Kohaku incident with the not actually nude backup dancers, NHK decided to make this year's Kohaku the tamest ever. Even the wacky drag performers with their wacky costumes were operating at their standard level of wack.

The only really horrifying number was, as I have grown to expect, the children's big song and dance number. This year we were treated to the sight of 500 or 600 little children with bug puppets on their hands spanking their booties and singing about the butt chewin' bug. Just so we couldn't miss the point, their costumes all had big, yellow, butt-enhancing bloomers. That number was mercifully short, yet somehow, not short enough. And even that was contrary to the usual policy of taking the most excruciating song of the year and turning it into a twenty minute extended dance mix. One year a song called "We've got tomorrow" was really big (and extremely annoying) and the Kohaku version of that song Did. Not. End. I think they're still performing it in a damp, dimly lit corner of NHK Hall.

Actually, that would explain why we haven't seen anything from that particular boy band lately.

Happy 2008, everyone! Akemashite omedetou!

Let's hope that Year of the Mousie lulls the NHK people into a false sense of security so the Kohaku can get back to its proper business of horrifying the viewing public.