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Just checking in

I am still employed. This job thing takes up a lot of time.

Still riding the rails and playing with the iPhone camera:

I flew out to Dayton to visit family in September:

Made it through airport security and everything.

It was a relaxing visit. I watched people play with a Wii. My hand-eye coordination is just as bad with the Wii as it is in the real world, so I was the wrist-strap referee. "Put on the wrist strap. You don't want to buy Grandma a new hi-def." "Mom. Put on the wrist strap, you don't want to buy your sister a new hi-def." "Mom. Put on the wrist strap." "Mom."

The three-year-old was actually better about the wrist strap than my mother.

Still playing with the camera:

We've had some lovely sunsets which, with the artificial lights of the ball park, are giving kind of a Thomas Kinkade effect. Now if only I were better at noise reduction. And adjusting levels for printing. And sales. I would totally have another income stream.

Still being missed by the cats:

But the gray one got to indulge in a few of his favorite things this weekend.

Monte Alban loves it when the weather grows cold and I start wearing fleece all over. Fleece pants, fleece bathrobe, etc. A fleecy lap is a lap you can really dig into.

Monte Alban loves to sit in my lap while I eat Chunky Monkey ice cream. He alternately attempts to stick his face in the bowl and, when that fails, to re-direct the spoon. He purrs the whole time.

Monte Alban loves to have his back pet while he eats. He's even woken me up in the middle of the night and led me downstairs (me thinking that he's out of food and if I don't feed him, he won't let me sleep) for some back-petting while munching and purring. I don't mind petting him while he eats, when it's sometime between dawn and bedtime, but I think three a.m. is a bit much. It's not like he's a baby and can't feed himself.

Still cooking instead of writing:

I've started listening to the podcasts of The Splendid Table on my weekly train rides home to Richmond. It's rather masochistic to listen to a foodie show while you're stuck on a train and the only food source is the Café Car, but it's a good distraction and gives me ideas. Even as I type, I'm testing a tip from the show: try adding orange blossom water in tiny amounts (like a quarter teaspoon or less) to baked goods and see how it heightens the flavor.

I added a quarter teaspoon to a half batch of butterscotch bars (the recipe can be found here, at the bottom of the page), which have just come out of the oven and are too hot to touch.

The verdict thus far: Orange blossom water smells lovely, but the particulates make my eyes burn. That mild citrus allergy can be so annoying. I may try rosewater instead. It may not have quite the same effect, but it's not an allergen.

Another tip, allergy free (at least for me), was to let tollhouse cookie dough rest in the fridge before you bake it. The baker on the show says he rests his up to 36 hours, but I let mine rest 24 hours. The reasoning is that, as the milling of flour has changed since the recipe was developed, the cookies baked today don't have the same chewy texture that tollhouse cookies did back in the 1930s. Resting the dough lets the flour absorb the moisture of the eggs and will yield a chewier cookie. This really did work. Also, because I use dark brown sugar, which has more molasses, instead of light brown sugar, I found that the flour absorbed the molasses as well, which gave the cookies a darker color and maybe a bit more molasses flavor (but I'd have to do a side-by-side comparison to be certain about that).

I just went over and sniffed the butterscotch bars. Ah, heavenly. Perhaps it will be worth the allergic reaction.

Time passes. I just went over and ate a butterscotch bar. Extra heavenly! I might use less orange blossom water next time. Or not. I'm going to have to take these in to work and leave them out in the pantry. Or not.

Real Job-iversary

I have been employed like an actual grownup person for an entire year, as of today. It's been nearly nineteen years since I managed that, if you overlook my many years of self-employment. Today, the rest of my entering team and I said, "Woo. A whole year. And we're still employed. If they were going to fire us they'd have done it last week. Only one more year of probation." And then we got back to work.

So, yes, it's time for my monthly entry.

In my walks around the neighborhood, I discovered a fig tree on the next block or so.

Figs on the sidewalk

I checked out the leaves, never having seen fig leaves in real life (paintings, yes, statues, yes, actual fig trees, no). The leaves appear to be an odd choice for Eden-wear. They are not really large enough to offer a sensible amount of coverage (more like a "why bother?" amount of coverage) and the multi-lobed shape guarantees that what coverage it does offer will be discontinuous to say the least.

iPhone! Eyestrain! (possibly these are related)

When we're not whinging about the features that the iPhone should have, we're fiddling around with them. I think the YouTube application is the cause of my sudden eyestrain issues. My elderly iBook is too slow to play videos, so I'm internet video deprived. Enter the YouTube button on the iPhone. Enter an inability to focus on anything 18 inches from my face. I had to take a half day off work and rest my eyes.

The camera is surprisingly good for what it is:

August lilies (fragrant and tall) in Simpson Park, Alexandria, VA

Now it's autumn and the colchicum are in bloom:

Colchicum in Simpson Park, Alexandria, VA

In my walk down in the park this evening (after dark, so no pictures), I discovered a tree with mysterious fruit. I've no idea what it is, something Mediterranean, I suspect. I'll have to ask the master gardener next time I see her.

The Toad Gods Are Angry

Bad karma, just what I need the day before I get on an airplane.

I was walking around up in the Monroe Avenue connector demolition site (also after dark) and saw that the demo people are making drastic inroads on my pile of dirt that I walk around on. They started gouging it away from the side towards the bread factory, leaving a big hole and a pile of uprooted evergreen shrubbery. In the light from the baseball field, I saw a hopping thing. A toad! So I started following it and saying, "I'm gonna git you, toad." Like I say to my cats. (Not that I meant it. I was not really interested in picking it up and getting peed on.) (By the toad. The cats are a bit more civilized.) So the toad hopped away across the pile of dirt and I followed it. The toad reached the end of the pile of dirt, didn't realize it, and hopped right over the edge! It tumbled down the 15 foot embankment, bouncing and jouncing. And did not hop away when it reached the bottom.

Er. Sorry about that, toad.

Sunday bananas are the saddest bananas

When I got back to Alexandria, I walked down to the Giant to pick up some bananas. Poor timing. Apparently a pee-wee football team goes in on Sunday afternoons and drop kicks the bananas all over the store. At least that's what springs to mind when one sees such a beaten up, bruised collection of fruit. I managed to find a tiny bunch of bananas which were green enough to have withstood the ravages of the Junior Titans.

The next day, I was back in the Giant and discovered the truth behind the battered bananas. It's not pee-wee football, it's the produce guy! There he was, slamming the bananas into place on their stepped display table. Ouch. He'd moved the bruised ones all down to the lowest level, presumably because it's easiest to brush them into a trash can from there, and was unloading boxes of new green ones onto the upper level.

So I've learned my lesson. Monday bananas. Never Sunday bananas.

Oz has joined the collective

Behold, he hath drunketh of the cider and joined the ranks of the Apple-heads.

Yah. We have iPhones now. Or rather, he has his iPhone and my iPhone down in Richmond. I am up in Alexandria and having to wait till the weekend to play with my iPhone, by which time he'll have rubbed all the new off his and be so over it. He ordered them a week ago and proceeded to spending his evenings staring into the black hole of the App store. I was a little concerned that he'd be totally over the iPhone before he even got it.

This weekend we'll be getting iPhone diaper bags, or whatever it is they need. Itty bitty car seats? Play pens?

I have been taking pictures

Monte Alban and his silvery whiskers
On my windowsill

Delicate clouds and demolition
At the end of Monroe Avenue in Del Ray

Trash by twilight
On North 28th in Church Hill

I am still employed

Still seems strange to me. It'll be a whole year next month.