Bread for Dad

Lots of bread recipes on the web.  Millions of them (yet one more series, from Betty Crocker).  The most basic bread machine white bread I know of, and use, is:

2 pound loaf of bread:

• 13 oz of milk (1.5 cups and 2 T.) - should be warm.  75-85 degrees.  Don't boil it.
• 2 T. butter
• 4 cups of flour - most recipes say use bread flour.  Regular flour works just fine
• 1.5 t. salt
• 2.5 T. sugar
• 2.25 t. dry yeast - little less if you use bread machine yeast, but it really doesn't matter, just use 2.25.

1.5 pound loaf of bread:

• 11 oz of milk (1.25 cups + 2 T.) - should be warm.  75-85 degrees.  Don't boil it.
• 2 T. butter
• 3.33 cups flour
• 1.25 t. salt
• 2 T. sugar
• 2 t. dry yeast

For egg bread, cut 1/3 of the milk and substitute with 2 eggs in both cases.

Fentimans Dandelion & Burdock

This was for sale at Kowalski's today.  It was such an intriguing idea for a soda that I was compelled to give it a spin.  I'd never even seen a bottle for sale at Jim's Apple Store (the link goes to a YouTube.com video and you can see the soda shelves).  It was one of the strangest things I've ever had, although good even after a few minutes of consideration.  There are a lot of flavors mixed into that little bottle: carbonated water, pear juice, fermented ginger root (so yeast as well), dandelion infusion, burdock infusion, and aniseed.  You could taste the aniseed on the back end.

I like the description of burdock on this page.  Apparently it has a lot of different names: Lappa. Fox's Clote. Thorny Burr. Beggar's Buttons. Cockle Buttons. Love Leaves. Philanthropium. Personata. Happy Major. Clot-Bur.  Almost sounds like you're perusing kinds of acid.  Culpepper (nice tie back to Tudor history for me) says, "'The Burdock leaves are cooling and moderately drying, wherby good for old ulcers and sores.... The leaves applied to the places troubled with the shrinking in the sinews or arteries give much ease: a juice of the leaves or rather the roots themselves given to drink with old wine, doth wonderfully help the biting of any serpents- the root beaten with a little salt and laid on the place suddenly easeth the pain thereof, and helpeth those that are bit by a mad dog:..."  Wish I'd known that before the dog bit me in Wisconsin in 2011.

Fentimans had several other kinds of soda as well.  This one was interesting enough I'll have to try the others.

I found it interesting that this is basically what I was drinking, or at least half of it.

Books 2012

My numbers were not nearly as good as the year before.  I was down by about 2300 pages.  I could blame it on being laid up in the hospital, but the time stuck home alone should have resulted in more read, not less.  We'll have to blame Minecraft and Skyrim and getting rid of satellite television which surprisingly didn't result in less television, but more.  On a positive note, it's got me recommitted to read about 50 pages a day this year.

11,735 pages.  Average book size of 366.7 pages.  Average rating of 7.28.  Down half a point from the year before.  32 books.  Largest one 954 pages.

Favorites?  I loved the Leviathan Books Mean Mr. Mustard pointed me at.  Eryn and I reread them out loud  after I was out of the hospital.  Tied together the pre- and post-accident periods.  And the Leviathan Awakes series, which isn't related at all, but is hard SciFi which I miss and usually only get from Iain Banks.  I gave The Rook a 9, but that's one of those cases where at year end, I'd probably bump it up because I enjoyed it so much compared to some of the other highly-rated books on my list.  Long Earth, excellent.  I didn't expect it to be normal Pratchett, so I wasn't disappointed.  Eryn and my wife read it aloud and loved it.  Eryn reread it and wrote an extra chapter as a school project.  Wool - excellent series, although the hype had me worried.  John Dies at the End.  Not a 10.  But it was what I wanted to read at the time and it's very good.  Just don't expect that level of goodness out of the sequel (which I just read in 2013 and didn't like nearly as much as John Dies at the End, soon to be a motion picture!).  Emperor Mollusk vs. The Human Brain.  I just enjoyed the shit out of that one, despite him stealing a bit out of my book before I've finished writing it.  Eryn read it and loved it.  I think she may have read it twice.  And of course, Tritium Gambit.  Written by a friend, but written very well and a great way to start the year.  I notice I don't have his sequel in here, even though I read it.  I'll have to get that into 2013.

Despised of 2012?  Flying the Face of God by Nina Allen.  Fortunately, it's a short story at a site that refused my short story.  That's not why I hate it.  It was just bad.  So it made me feel bad about being rejected.  The Strain Trilogy.  It just got worse and worse and more "we're going to turn this into a movie"-ish.  It just pissed me off.  Not original in any way whatsoever.  And yet I read three.  Guess I could have been a monk as this was sort of my own hairshirt for the year.  And Robopocalypse might be a surprise as many people liked it and it's going to be a movie, but I found it mostly boring, not particularly creative/new, and just sort of a waste of time.

Scotts Short List Current Year

Title	Author	Rate
Enrique's Journey	Nazario, Sonia	8.25
Long Earth, The	Pratchett, Terry	9.00
Leviathan Trilogy (Leviathan, Goliath, Behemoth) - REREAD WITH ERYN	Westerfeld, Scott	9.50
Geekomancy	Underwood, Michael R.	7.50
Caliban's War (The Expanse)	Corey, James S.A.	9.25
Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse)	Corey, James S.A.	9.25
That Which Should Not Be	Talley, Brett J.	8.75
Too Many Curses	Martinez, A. Lee	7.00
Rook, The	O'Malley, Daniel	9.00
Oblivion Society, The	Hart, Marcus Alexander	6.00
Redshirts: A Novel With Three Codas	Scalzi, John	8.75
Soft Apocalypse	McIntosh, Will	9.00
Wool: Omnibus Edition (Wool 1-5)	Howey, Hugh	8.50
Confessions of a D-List Supervillain	Bernheimer, Jim	8.25
Harvard Business Review: May 2012		8.00
Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon	Ghiglieri, Michael P. and Myers, Thomas M.	7.50
Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, The	Greene, Brian	8.25
Emails from an Asshole: Real People Being Stupid	Lindsay, John	7.25
Night Eternal, The: Book Three of the Strain Trilogy	Del Toro, Guillermo and Chuck Hogan	3.00
Fall, The: Book Two of the Strain Trilogy	Del Toro, Guillermo and Chuck Hogan	4.00
Strain, The: Book One of The Strain Trilogy	Del Toro, Guillermo and Chuck Hogan	5.00
Gates: A Samuel Johnson Tale, The	Connolly, John	7.50
We Kill Monsters	Leone, Christopher and Laura Harkcom and Brian Churilla	3.00
Helm, The Volume 1 (v. 1)	Hardison, Jim and various	4.00
At the Mountains of Madness	Lovecraft, HP	7.50
John Dies at the End	Wong, David	10.00
Emperor Mollusk versus the Sinister Brain	Martinez, A. Lee	8.75
Robopocalypse	Wilson, Daniel H.	5.00
Leviathan Trilogy (Leviathan, Goliath, Behemoth)	Westerfeld, Scott	9.50
Damned	Palahniuk, Chuck	6.00
Flying in the Face of God	Allen, Nina	2.00
Tritium Gambit	Hyrkas, Erik	9.00

Heavy Lifting

I keep our Christmas tree up in the rafters of the garage.  Not the pine variety.  We got rid of that a long time ago in favor of a fabricated tree.  Not to avoid mess.  It still sheds needles.  But to avoid the trip, selection, return trip, and maintenance of a real tree.  I miss the smell a little, but there are pine trees near my house I can visit if I need a fix, and I can even haul some needles back if I need the smell.

According to my tree, which seems to get heavier every single year (I'm sure it is, it must be picking up something from the air or the ornaments), standing on a ladder and shoving it around on my own is not recommended.  In the past, I didn't think too much of this warning.  But this year, with the plated/screwed hip, standing on a ladder, balancing slightly backward while I gave it a shove onto the hanging planks, my leg gave me a warning that my years lofting it up there might be numbered or, at the very least, that I should heed the sign and come up with a new storage location.  I don't think I'm in any danger of breaking the hip unless I fall.  But I do suspect I'm in more danger of falling given that my leg seems to have shifted length a bit and I'm not as balanced as I once was.  It's very seldom an issue.  However, shoving heavy boxes over my head, and vigorously hopping out of bed in the morning, seem to be edge cases.  The bed statement might be perplexing, but picture hopping up and getting going before your brain and body are really ready, which is often how I get going because I long ago convinced myself half the lying around in bed issue people seem to have is just not popping up as soon as you can.  The result is a lean against the wall because my balance doesn't autocorrect quickly enough to tell me where my shoulder is in relation to the wall.  Coupled with a malfunctioning Marvin the Martian anamatronic art hanging that sticks out a few inches that I now bump into now and then, I know for a fact I lean a little when I get up more than I used to (although the odd klutzy moment in the past had me bumping it, so it's not a unique experience, only different in terms of frequency).

I notice as well that I should get entirely different people to lift my tree box, because both of those guys seem to be much younger, more coiffed men.

Translation

Yesterday I was sitting by a Vietnamese couple who were having a discussion and practicing pronunciation.  She would say a word like millennium, he'd try to repeat it, and they'd both laugh and giggle.  After a while they just went into normal back and forth that I couldn't understand, which I mostly tuned out until they got to this exchange:


Obama

Samsung

Big Fat Lesbian

I really wish I understood the bits between.

Kitty Snuggling

Not me, fools.  Like I'd ever snuggle a cat.  Marvin looks very, very angry about being someone's new best friend.  No catnip was required.

The Death of Christmas

At one time, I considered photographing all our ornaments.  But there are a lot of them.  Too many.  We add 3+ per year, so there isn't enough time. Ever.  However, I will be keeping track of those ornaments that die a horrible death during each season so they can be remembered forever.  Their passing may be due to broken strings and no standard eye to rethread.  Broken or shattered bits.  Plain old ugliness.  Or a failure to ever remember why they were sentimental in the first place.  If you gave us the ornament and you're irritated that it has been retired, remember, the cat broke it.  It wasn't our fault.


It looks fine, but all the edging is worn off.  You wouldn't give a present wrapped that way to a friend, so you shouldn't hang it on your tree.  All you think about is a shabby Christmas.

 

Poor jigsaw Santa.  His hat defined him.  Now he's just some fat man trying to hug children without their permission.

He probably should have died 20 years ago.  He was just persistent.  He's been punched in his eyes made out of coal so many times they've become diamonds. Who puts legs on their snowmen?  That's not even in the Frosty cartoon or Doctor Who Versus the Snowmen.  Maybe I should have painted icicle teeth on him and added a snowglobe nearby and told Eryn it was a Doctor Who theme.

RAGBRAI Prep II

Yesterday, I listed what I kept on me or the bike during the ride.  Today I'm going to list the things that aren't on the bike, but instead packed to be loaded on the truck between towns.  I may update the lists as I think of things.  I know for certain I forgot sunglasses on yesterday's list.  A definite necessity.

• A large bag to hold everything - I have a hockey bag.  I like having wheels.  You might think, "What the hell for?"  But after a day of bicycling, not all the places you pitch your tent are close to the truck.  And the first year when my father and I got to the end of the ride, we picked up our luggage and then had to get about a mile or so out of town to meet up with my wife.  Being able to drag the luggage behind the bike was incredibly useful.
• A pretty piece of fabric.  To attach to the large bag so you can find it in the giant pile dumped out of the semi at the end of each day.  I won't tell you what my piece of fabric looks like.  I don't want you to copy it.  Use the same fabric for your whole team.  Doesn't hurt to find a friend's luggage for them.  One less piece to dig through for yours.
• Tent - strapped to the outside of the bag with bungee cords.  I like my little one man dome tent.  Just make sure it's waterproof and test it before you go (I say this from experience).  My Pa wanted to take a two person tent on the first ride, which allows you to strap a cot or two to the other person's bag if you're going with friends.  But I nixed that.  It's bad enough that you have to get up to the clacking of poles at 5:00-5:30 a.m.  But if all the assorted snoring included snoring in your own tent, that would be unbearable.
• Plastic bags for everything.  They dump your luggage on the ground each day.  Make sure every single item is wrapped in a plastic bag so it stays dry.  Bring an extra one in case one breaks.  And another extra one for dirty clothes.  You don't want those near anything else you own after a day of baking and sweating.
• Sleeping bag - doesn't have to be heavy.  It's hot.  Really hot.
• Pillow - I have a little porta-pillow.  If you can bring something bigger, you should.  The little one pisses you off by the end of the week.
• Air Mattress or pad - get something wide enough that you don't fall off one side.
• Floor pump - strap it to the outside of a bag and make sure it's not your favorite in case it breaks.  Comes in real handy in the morning.  You can get by without one and use your hand pump, CO2, and the pumps available at the rest stops.  But I found the wait to be annoying.
• Deodorant
• Band aid (one or two)
• Baby powder (small container, in case you want to shift it to your bike)
• Socks - at least three pair.  More if you like things to stay fluffy.  No guarantees you'll be able to wash and dry your clothes outside soap and water.
• Detergent/Soap - you can use soap to wash your clothes.  If you get lucky enough to find a machine, you'll want detergent as whoever was there first may have purchased it all.  The first RAGBRAI, when we didn't have an RV, I just took my bar of soap to my clothes when I went in the shower stall each day.  Two bars of soap works better as one may go lost or just wear out by end of week.
• Quarters - few bucks for a machine if you find one.
• Underwear - depends on whether you bring shorts or bike shorts that double as shorts.  I bring a mix.
• Shorts - I wear bike shorts during the ride, but I don't like to walk around in black bike shorts, so after I showered, I had a pair of shorts to change into (two).  Two other days I used my bike shorts that have a more traditional shorts cut.  Then you can forgo the underpants.  They're built in.  Good thing about those is you get into camp, put on the bike shorts which are real shorts, and then the next day your wear them on the ride.  Eliminates a change of clothes and carrying extra dirty clothes to manage.
• Something to wear to bed if you're not a freeballer.  It's hot.  You sweat.  There are thousands of people.  You might want to reconsider the freeballing.
• Flashlight of somesort.  Little lantern if you like to read.
• Batteries for the flashlight.
• Book to read with the flashlight.  You can use your phone, but I prefer a real book.  Don't need much - just one - unless you're really anti-social.
• T-shirts.  One a day, plus one should do it.  I did less.  You can wash them and if you bring cash, there are lots of places to buy a few extra shirts.
• Cap - it gets HOT.  Not a big deal on the bike when you have a helmet.  Big deal in town when you don't.  Particularly if you're bald...ing.
• Shoes/Sandals - I don't wear specialty shoes on the bike.  I gots me some baskets.  I packed sandals so in case I wanted to wear them in town I could.  I wore them a lot.  They cool you off.
• Bike lock - up to you.  I put it here because I took one and then never put it on the bicycle the first year.  Second year I did the same thing.  If you do take one, I recommend something simple like a wire lock you can use to lock up a few bikes if you have friends.
• Brush/comb.  Another item that might belong ON the bike.
• Toothpaste/Brush - collapsing kind works fine.  I kept this on my bicycle most of the time so I could use it after the pancake breakfasts I frequently at the ten mile mark each morning.
• Shaving cream/razor. After shave if you want it.  I've kicked the habit since my accident.  But it doubles as a way to cover up a bit of smelliness if you're trying to wait out the shower line.
• Charger for your phone/camera/whatever - there are places to plug in at some of the stops. If you can find a portable recharger, all the better.  They have solar versions since I last went on RAGBRAI.  If Adam has an iPhone, I can justify the purchase.
• Mosquito repellent.  Not absolutely necessary - but it can definitely come in handy.

RAGBRAI Prep I

This is a series of posts intended to get Adam ready for RAGBRAI.  It won't be complete, but hopefully it'll capture a few things that are useful and get me thinking about what was important in the past.  I'll tag them all RAGBRAI PREP so they're easy to find.

This first one is a repeat from RAGBRAI XXXV in 2007.  Six years ago, really?  Not surprising.  I was trying to get one in under the wire before I turned 40.  Weird to think of 38 as young.

These are the things I carried during the day of the ride.  On me, on my bike, in my pack:

• Update: Remember a cap.  This is mandatory if you're balding like I am.  I had to buy one on both trips.
• Helmet
• Two water bottles - you can probably get by with one, but it is the hottest week of the year and sometimes I'd blow through both my bottles over the course of ten miles.  Once, we missed a town (it was so small we blew past it) and then two bottles became a godsend.
• Rain jacket (take it in and out depending on the weather report)
• Blackberry (phone) - off unless needed.  See the next item - I didn't use my phone as a camera, just chews up too much battery life.
• Camera - extra batteries or a charger.  Enough memory to handle the whole ride.
• Notepad and pen - so you can track what pictures you took if necessary and few amusing notes.
• 30 SPF sun block - later upgraded to 50 SPF
• Money and credit cards
• Maps of where we were going (elevations, populations) - not entirely necessary, there are plenty of people to follow, but it's nice to know how far ahead the next stop is, particularly if you blow a spoke.
• Butt Balm - incredibly useful.  However, I got in the habit of putting it on in the morning and then leaving it in my main pack to get rid of one more thing.  When I did carry it, it was because I was worried my dad hadn't packed any or was out.  Saddle sores are brutal if you get them during the ride.  Took months for them to go away after my second RAGBRAI.
• Spare tube - or patches.  I like to have an extra tube.  Both can't hurt.
• Wet wipes - cleanliness is next to godliness.  And they're good for all sorts of things.
• Hex wrench - make sure it has the size/s you need.  I have a multitool now.  Only one rider needs a tool if it fits both bicycles.
• Pump - I'm not sure which I'll take this next time.  I own both a CO2 driven mini pump and a manual pump.  I tend to take both along as I'm paranoid.
• Toilet Paper (small amount in case places ran out) - wipes are a substitute, obviously. 
• Bike Gloves - I liked having them along, but I didn't always wear them.  I've sort of grown away from them over the years.
• Address for ex-boss' mom as a stopover point - or any other Iowa friends/friends of friends once you know the route.  Most of them like it when you stop to say "hi".
• Tylenol/Advil - lots of it.  Never hurts to pop a few before bed to handle aching muscles.
• Peanuts (some sort of snack) - something emergency that doesn't melt.  I like the Nutrition mix - dried fruit and nuts.
• Razor Knife (used three times during the ride) - surprisingly handy.
• Chain lubricant - you pick up a lot of dirt.
• Spoke wrench - make sure you have the right size.
• SPF 15 Lip Cover - I don't normally get burnt lips. I did during RAGBRAI.  That's a long time in the sun.
• Strap for my pack to carry it (never used) - so don't bring it again.
• Tire Irons (one set between the two of us)
• Sunglasses
• Odometer - it's very useful to know how far away that next town is or, more importantly, if you missed on completely.
• Everything in plastic ziploc bags for rain safety - including a few extra bags in case one wears out.

I wish I had brought:

• an ipod with speakers (they make a way to attach them to your bike) - I disagree with my old self.  I far prefer catching the tunes off other people's speakers, even when it's awful.  It's a source of amusement.
• a kickstand (keeps the dew off your chain and gears - I have a little bit of rust) - interesting.  I disagree with my old self again.  I'd just be careful this time.  Put plastic over the front gears or something.
• a light (blinking, red - for early, overcast mornings - just the back of the bike) - hard to say yea or nay on this one.  But I think yea.  It'd be nice to have it even if you only ever used it once.  No spare batteries necessary.
• 20 less pounds - should be good for that this time. I should be 65 pounds lighter than at the start of my last RAGBRAI.  Makes up for all the gear above.

At certain times, there was also:

• A banana - free food.  Take it.  Keep it.  Eat it.
• A bottle of soda or water - pretty consistently.  One year Hilary Clinton gave me a free bottle of water.  Not personally.  It was nice to have.
• Trash to throw away at the next stop - don't liter Iowa!
• A fossil I found on the side of the road for Eryn (i.e. a big rock)
• Knick knacks from the information booth (beads, spoke clickers, etc) - dump them in your main bag whenever you get the chance.  Clutter is a problem, even if the weight isn't.

I packed pretty heavy simply because I had the extra space in my big bag.  I have the same bag now. I think most people made due with putting SPF on in the morning and packing it in their big bag, and then making space for a camera, spare, tire irons, cell phone and money. My Dad carried most of the above (sans camera) in a somewhat smaller bag with webbing where he could easily tuck a banana.  If you're big on bike jerseys, and I have a number that fit now, you can tuck a banana or snack in the back pocket as some extra space.

Pelvis

I don't think I've ever posted a picture of my pelvis post accident.  This is from 7/16/12, so three months after I broke it.  Those are some nice nails and plates on my left.  The scale on the right of the picture says 20 cm, so I think the one is 12 cm long and the other is about 7 cm.  So about 7.5 inches end to end, with overlap?  The scar is about 12-13 inches, so they had some working space.  Glad they didn't have to re-operate to put the extra plate/s in for reinforcement.  This seems like more than enough.

Bread

Apparently, in this instance, I didn't get the container fully pushed down onto the gears in the bread machine. All I got out of the deal was pretty much an expensive stick of bread-scented incense.  Not a bad thing necessarily.  The house smelled great.  But I do like to eat the end product.   I was worried at first that the machine was dead, but I managed a new loaf that was significantly better.