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Winter

Winter is the time of year when you get brain freeze drinking water straight out of the cold tap. You think, how can water be that cold and not be solid?

Are laws of physics being broken by the municipal water utility? Or being followed …

It doesn't have to be -75 °C to be cold enough for me. After watching me operate my camera barehanded in the snow, Oz took pity on me and gave me an early Christmas present: silk glove liners! They are thin but add much needed insulation to my (windproof and waterproof, but insufficiently insulated) gloves. I need a little more time to get the gloves on and off now, but it's worth it, except when I need to work my iPhone which demands bare fingers.

Today the phone rang when I was walking home from the bus stop. Eek! Must get the call because it's probably the phone company calling about the missing dial tone on our landline and they never call from a number you can call back at. No time to pull off the gloves, so I operate the "Slide to answer" with the tip of my nose.

It worked! Who knew there was an advantage to my long pointy nose? I just used my nose to punch out a number on the keypad without making too many mistakes. If I do that on the train platform people will edge away and give me lots of space.

I can make this work for me in so many ways.

Snow days

When my train rolled into Richmond Friday night, the snow had only just started to fall and I wasn't believing all the fuss and expectations of accumulation. (This happens every time there's even a hint of snow in the forecast.)

We watched (from indoors) as the snow kept falling and piling up. The air was still enough that several inches accumulated on the telephone wires.

It was still falling in the morning, with occasional breaks for sleet (it sounded like someone throwing beads against the windows). It fell for most of the day, though not all that heavily most of the time. Oz cleared the front walk and dug out his car. We went and did a little advance grocery shopping for our holiday menu plan. The stores were open but strangely empty.

My satellite dish was too clogged with snow to pull down a signal all day. No schmaltzy Japanese dramas or travelogues to keep me company while I wrapped presents. The satellite signal didn't come back till Sunday afternoon, just in time for the hours-long broadcasts of Kyoto high school relay races. That's entertainment: cold-looking wiry teenagers in tanks and shorts jogging interminably past bundled up spectators. To judge from the number of relay race broadcasts on TV Japan, you would bet that the Japanese people are absolutely fascinated by long distance urban running, but my money's on the programming being way cheap.

We went out again in the evening for a holiday card photo fail. Still snowing and I brought a little hat to protect the camera, but neglected to consider how I would not then be able to attach a flash. Next time: plastic bag!

"Or a cambrella," says Oz.
"We don't have one."
"We have umbrellas and duct tape."

But the elements were the least of it.

The view up the hill of the Capitol and the state Christmas tree are now obstructed by bleachers in the process of being assembled (probably) for the swearing in of the new governor. Peachy! We now have some photos of ourselves standing directly in front of the Capitol, getting snowed on. We managed to position ourselves so it doesn't look like the state Christmas tree is growing out of our heads, but that's the best you could say about these shots.

So that was Saturday.

Sunday was sunny and bright and I spent the morning trying to make arrangements to get back to Alexandria. My Sunday evening train was cancelled, not that Amtrak actually said that on their website, oh no, they just had some noncommittal verbiage about a "service disruption" and no further information. I called though, and once I finally got through to a human, she was really forthcoming. Most Sunday trains were cancelled as fallout from Saturday disruptions. She said that Somewhere between Richmond and Alexandria, a passenger train got stuck behind a disabled freight train. Literally stuck: it froze to the tracks for twelve hours before the train was able to back up to the previous station and release the passengers from that little hell on wheels.

I was able to switch my reservation to a Monday morning train originating in Richmond and its timeliness therefore not dependent on the train not freezing to the track in North Carolina. By the time my office decided to be closed on Monday, all the later trains were sold out. Ah well, getting up to Alexandria in the morning meant that I'd be able to dig my car out of a snow bank in daylight.

Sunday afternoon we tried for more holiday pictures in the helpful sunshine. We went down to Libby Hill Park and watched sledders trudge around trying all the different slopes to find the best ride. Some people with lots of excess energy were flinging snow around with garden spades and building a snow fort. The park is also decorated for Christmas. It's much easier to find decorations and stand in front of them than it is to decorate for yourself. I don't know how many years it's been since I decorated. The snowman standing on my mantelpiece (year round) could probably tell me. Anyway, holiday card win!

Today, the first day of winter, I rode a train through Virginia woods filled up with snow, getting deeper as we went north. The 20 inches of snow in Alexandria makes our foot in Richmond look really not so bad. I hear they got 19 inches where the Princess lives. I need to ask if her husband went out in flip-flops to clear the front walk with a dustpan (that being how he handled the little snowfall a couple weeks ago).

The cab driver who drove me from the station kept pointing out buried cars. "Now that one is going to take hours to dig out!" The side streets in my neighborhood were (are) so deep in packed snow and slush that I had him drop me off on Mount Vernon rather than slither the last three blocks in the cab. I slithered the rest of the way on foot (not a bad walk, really).

Back at the house, my landlady and her friends had been busy digging out the sidewalks and the path back to my entrance (thank you!). They even shoved the snow off my car so I only had to dig out around it.

While I was digging, people kept asking me if I needed to go somewhere and did I need help? Or a ride? "No, I only have to do this every ten years or so, so I don't mind doing it myself." "No, I'm not going anywhere. I just like to have the car dug out in case I need to." (Considering that I'll have to parallel park between two snow banks, I'm a little more concerned about putting the car back if I try and drive anywhere.

I'm glad the buses are running more or less normally again. My office will be open tomorrow. Business as usual. Our snow day is over now, but this winter will probably bring us a few more.

When does the sitting down and goofing off part of the evening begin?

Now, I guess, at least until the dryer stops and I have to go do things with linens.

Oh, and the dryer just kicked off.

And I have the hiccups.

[Time passes.]

Okay, I'm back, minus the hiccups. I have dealt with laundry, packed up lunches, washed dishes, showered, and now the sitting down can begin. At least until I get up and finish packing my bag for my trip home to Richmond.

I'm not sure how I'll get everything in, and that's without Christmas presents (I've been shopping online and having everything shipped to Oz's work address). It's the bread that is taking up all the space: a little loaf of home-baked for Oz and two mini panettones for my mother. The camera bag is a bit on the bulky side too, but I need the stuff that's in it if Oz and I are to freeze our bottoms off taking a Christmas card picture this weekend.

A friend of mine at work was asking why I even take a bag back and forth, considering that I have a whole house of stuff in Richmond and a whole apartment of stuff in Alexandria. She has a point. But it's not like I'm carrying shampoo and clothes, it's just that once I pick up the camera and whatever accessories I think I might want, plus my boring toxic medicines (which do have to go back and forth), plus the stuff I regularly carry to work (breakfast, lunch, and snack), plus my calendar (I have a lot to keep track of), then I might as well put it all in a rolling carryon so I don't throw out my back from having a half dozen smaller bags hanging off me. Also, there is just not enough of me to hang that many bags on.

Ah, the fascinating logistics of the dual domicile life. It's like having another job.

Available light

Fountain by night, Capitol Square

I got a new camera (D700) last summer. The sensor has fantastic low light performance. I can shoot handheld at night with available light and capture what I see.

This is great, especially now that it's winter and dark when I'm not at work. All I need are magical gloves that will keep my hands warm and still allow me to fiddle with the camera (all those little knobs and buttons: you can't work them with gloves on and you can't work them with numb fingers). Fingerless gloves? I don't know.

My old camera is semi-retired. Oz used it when we went to Vermont last September (he has no Flickr so his pictures are just sitting on his hard drive), but he'd rather complain about the iPhone camera than carry an SLR around. Poor D50! It had a great run, but has to settle for being a backup body now.

News you can use

Useful information for children of all ages!

Those new high velocity hand driers that have been cropping up in public restrooms? They offer entertainment possibilities in addition to the creepy sight of your skin getting smeared around by the blast of air. I found that if one holds one's (wet) palms together so that the fleshy pads at the base of one's thumbs are just barely touching, the blast of air will vibrate them together and generate a farting sound.

My rather small hands resulted in only a small sound. Since I was in the restroom without a child in tow I didn't have anyone to share this with or to provide an excuse for further experimentation. (It's science, I tell you! Educational! We must make the most of these teachable moments.)

I think someone with bigger hands might get a bigger, more resonant sound than what I got. Someone with little hands might get a squeak. I can only experiment with the hands I've got, however, and will have to wait for other researchers to share their findings.

Tired is as tired does

When I was self-employed, I never had a weekly fatigue cycle like I do now that I'm a wage slave. The fact that I'm getting less sleep and working more hours probably has something to do with it. (Ya think?)

Under self-employment, my fatigue cycle was daily. As in: it is a day of the week and I am working. Can I stop yet?

Under other-employment, it's more like this:

Monday: I am actually fairly energetic.

Tuesday: Wow, it's been a long week.

Wednesday: Still a pretty long week.

Thursday: How can it be only Thursday?

Friday: How much can I get done before I leave for Richmond?

If it weren't for Tuesdays, it wouldn't be that bad. What I really need is a way to skip Tuesdays.

That not being an option, I've found I can alleviate the fatigue somewhat by marching up the stairs (second to ninth floors) twice a day and making sure to eat my afternoon snack (2:00: an apple and maybe some nuts if I remembered to pack any).

Co-workers comment on how "healthy" I'm being, but really, I'm just trying to stay awake.

Just this week, as I was slicing up my apple in the break room, one guy said, "Oh, you really like fruit. That's so healthy. I don't really get enough. We're vegetarians, and I try to eat green vegetables like once a week, but it's hard."

"What do you eat?" I'm a vegetarian and I eat vegetables every day. I am not sure how you can be a vegetarian and avoid eating vegetables daily. (Vegetarians get asked the "What do you eat?" question a lot. The answer is, depending on the vegetarian, some variation on "everything but chickens and cows and pigs". I've never asked another vegetarian this question. Till now.)

"Oh, we eat a lot of fried."

I boggle. He's a fried-starchian. I wonder how he stays awake.

Be there with boots on

Early snow this weekend and winter boots are out for the duration, I suspect.

We are barreling right past Thanksgiving into the holidays. What with working and all, we hardly notice except when we suddenly get a day off. (I really need to think about Christmas, but every time I do, I give up right away because the logistics for the simplest things seem like too much work. Also, my PC at home has a virus and I need to deal with that. And what will we do for our holiday card picture? Last year it was lumps of coal. If I can't think of anything, it'll be lumps of coal again. We even still have the coal so we wouldn't have to go scrounging under the railroad trestle again.)

This year we had the tired person's Thanksgiving. We made all the things we like best as leftovers, then were too tired to complete the meal. Going straight to the grazing stage is not all bad, but one's meals tend to consist of a pile of protein and desserts.

By Friday I broke down and cooked what I'd been intending for the vegetarian part of the meal and then lived off that (and desserts) for the rest of the weekend. Oz had turkey sandwiches.

Chickpea and kale stew

14 sun-dried tomato halves, not packed in oil
olive oil
2 onions, chopped
1 bay leaf
3 cloves of garlic, pressed
1 28 oz can of chopped tomatoes, undrained
1 30 oz can (or two 15 oz cans) of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 teaspoon of basil
cayenne to taste
2 cups or so (about a half pound) of chopped kale (frozen is okay)
black pepper

Cut the sun-dried tomatoes into strips, place them in a small heat-proof bowl and add boiling water to cover them. Set aside while you mess with the onions. If the sun-dried tomatoes are too hard to cut, soak them first.

In a large pot, sauté the onions with the bay leaf in olive oil until tender. Add the garlic, cook for a few minutes longer.

Add the tomatoes, chickpeas, seasonings, and sun-dried tomatoes with their soaking liquid. Once the mixture comes to a simmer, add the kale.

Simmer for a while, partially or fully covered, over low heat. Stir occasionally and make sure it hasn't gone dry. The longer it simmers, the better it tastes. 45 minutes? Check to see if it needs salt (it probably won't).

Garnish with feta and fresh ground pepper.

I usually serve this with a mixed rice pilaf (with sautéed onions and celery, lots of garlic, pine nuts or pistachios, mint, lemon juice) or lazy girl's pilaf (stir some pine nuts or pistachios into cooked mixed rice, add salt if needed). This dish could also be a soup (just add broth to the consistency you like). It makes a nice green vegetable-including side dish for meat eaters and is substantial enough to satisfy and indulge vegetarians as a main dish. It's even vegan till you put feta on it.