Easter

This past Sunday was the day our Lord rose from the grave, and it was pretty awesome. First I got up and walked to a church service. The sun was shining, the sky was blue and the day was verging on being hot. The service I was going to was being held in Intermedia Arts, a kind of art collective that has fallen on hard times recently. The space was very impressive, and I loved what the congregation had done to set up the worship room. I showed up about half an hour early and therefore got to talk with a lot of the congregation and the pastor. This, plus the actual service convinced me that I needed to go to church more often.

The service was incredibly cute- they had a jazz band playing for the instrumentals, the congregation was all friendly, they had an active youth group, and the little kids were adorable. Case in point was the kids' sermon that the pastor gave. Apparently at the beginning of Lent the kids had taken little pieces of paper with the word "Hallelujah" written on them and put them in a box, as Christians are not supposed to say Hallelujah during Lent (Jesus' death being a sad time and all that noone should be overjoyed and praising. Yay guilt!). So, on Easter they opened the box again and took out the pieces of paper and handed them out to the congregation members while we sang Hallelujah. This plus the general friendliness of the group made me feel very welcome. Apparently they have a jazz service at 10:30 on Sundays which I think I'll try to attend in the future.

After the service I hardboiled some eggs and then went to lunch with Rachel, her mom, her mom's friend Jan and her daughter. We ate at this place called Ecopolitan, where the gimmick is that everything is raw and vegan. So there were a lot of buckwheat and almond "cheese" on things, and the smoothies were necessarily delicious. Service was a bit slow, and the prices were a little high, but otherwise it was a pretty enjoyable place to grab a bite to eat.

Then it was time for egg dying! Kristin and Becky came over at 2 to do this with me, Jason and Caroline. We had a lot of fun and made some very pretty eggs.

Then it was cooking time for me. Rachel proved to be a very able sous chef and helped whip together a 10 pound ham with pineapples, kartoffelsalad, mashed sweet potatoes, a salad, peppers, ants on a log, and two loaves of bread. Cooking was a lot of fun, and it seems like lots of people enjoyed it. Teagle also showed off her skillz by bringing a "butter lamb" and a Jesus-bunny cake. We had a very successful egg hunt, and then served dinner for 13 people. Pics below.



All in all, it was a very good evening, and I'd love to do it again sometime. I just really like hosting people and cooking food for a big group (well, as long as I'm not rushed). Happy Easter!

Until next time...

"Never refuse to do a kindness unless the act would work great injury to yourself, and never refuse to take a drink- under any circumstances."
- Mark Twain's Notebook

Valentime's Day!

As many of you may be aware, this past Saturday was Valentime's [sic] Day, which the girl and I decided to celebrate in style. We began by giving each other gifts- she got me a geeky shirt, and I got her a ridiculous geeky shirt. Unfortunately the hearts on her shirt didn't light up properly, but I can guarantee you that when I get a fixed copy there shall be ridiculous pics.

We then got all spiffed up and headed out to El Meson, a nice Spanish/Caribbean restaurant on 35th and Lyndale. We got to have some very exciting looking and tasting treats like ceviche! (cold, not warm) After dinner we headed out to Yum! to grab some desert, which consisted of a slice of coconut cake. I was then directed to our mystery activity location by Rachel, who was having way too much fun not telling me where we were going. It turned out to be Patrick's Cabaret, which was having a cabaret and burlesque show that night. We got there a bit early, so we decided to head over to Town Talk Diner to kill some time.

If you haven't been to the Diner before, it is awesomeness distilled with a slight infusion of crazy. They have all sorts of delicious foods and drinks that are a bit off the beaten path- for instance, they make a lot of their own liquers and throw a lot of interesting twists into existing ones, like habanero infused scotch. The place was packed (it being Valentime's [sic] Day), but we managed to get two seats at the bar very quickly. I was immediately drawn to their alcoholic malteds and ordered one called Monkey Business (see above pic), which consisted of PB, banana liquer, chocolate, rum, and vanilla ice cream. It tasted like a chocolate fluffernutter and not at all like something that would get me drunk. Rachel had some kind of blackberry concoction with homemade liquer which was also fantastic.

We then headed on over to the Cabaret to wait in the quickly growing line. Even though it was pretty cold out, the line quickly snaked around out of the alley and down the sidewalk. The people at Patrick's didn't seem to mind- they happily crammed patrons in wherever they could find room. This led to a lot of people seeing the show, but unfortunately some bad sight lines for us unless we sat seiza style on our chairs. The show itself was pretty good- the musicians and singers were talented, the belly dancers jiggly, and the burlesque performances had the right mix of raunch and whimsy to make it incredibly entertaining. For instance, in one act the performer came out wearing pretty much only pink balloons. She had a heart shaped pin that she and audience members used to pop in a suitably suggestive manner. Once down to no balloons... let's just say that tassles are fun.

After the show we headed home to watch some 28 Days Later (best Valentime's [sic] Day movie ever!), but by 1:30 were too exhausted to finish the second half.

There's been some other stuff going on, but I'll wait till later to post about it. Until next time...

"What, Sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce."
- Speech given by Mark Twain, January 11, 1868

Gov't Money, An awesome weekend, and other stuff

So, I am now living on the support of the government. Yaaaaaaaaay. It turns out that applying for Food Support is actually quite easy if you have all of the proper documentation ripping and raring to go. Well, not ripping, but raring I think is still appropriate. Anyway, I went in, took my number, was immediately called up to a window where I filled out a blue form and handed in my previously complete CFAP (the form that gets you all the support you could ever need), then sat and waited for about 2 hours. I doodled a bit, drew up some new lists for teh geekedness, and was eventually called into Door 18.
Very few people get to go through Door 18, especially on their first try. Behind it are a bunch of people with computers, and you sit in a very short chair, one so short that you can barely see over the cubicle wall at the person processing your paperwork. It was a rather humbling experience, as the only way I could interact at all was to reach over this high ledge, like a kid handing reports over a kitchen table. If that was their intention, then bravo I say.
There I sat, handed over my documents, convinced them that I was in fact an Americorps member, and waited while the computer threw a hissy fit over my non-existant existant income (it's confusing, I know, but Americorps income does not count as income! Well, for the non-taxing gov't, anyway). Got my new form, headed down three flights of stairs, waited in another line in a surprisingly airport terminal-esque space, and got my EBT card (it's actually quite pretty and innocuous; bunch of fall colored trees, blue sky, looks like a credit card).

But the upside of that is now I can actually eat food without wondering how much it costs! Yay! And speaking of eating food, last weekend was pretty awesome. So one of Rachel's fellow AP people had a dinner party at her house courtesy of her host parents. It was in Edina, so we knew it would be a pretty good spread, but we were completely unprepared for the amazingness that was to happen. The couple were very friendly, and even had their own home brewed beer! (steam ale with an infusion of gooseberries- very crisp, excellent blend of hops that was not overpowering but definitely present, and a slight malt taste. The gooseberries added an interesting level of tartness to the beer, but in a very good way.) So there was a huge, amazingly delicious spread, plenty of wine and beer, and afterwards we had a poetry reading. This was actually probably the second best part (after the beer, of course), as we got to hear a lot of serious, funny, and homebrewed compositions that were uniformly interesting. I decided to be a bit ironic; you can find my submission here, once again by the inestimable Mark Twain.

On Saturday it was actually warm out, so after a good day at work (students at both classes!), Rachel and I went for a walk around the lakes, then headed out to see Waltz with Bashir. I really, really liked the movie on about every level. The narrative to the documentary was compelling, the subject matter interesting, and the medium it was told in was incredibly brilliant. It is also a very heavy movie, and can be disturbing, hilarious, and cause dumb struck silence in the span of 15 minutes. Rachel had some reservations about the film, though, particularly the fact that it only told one side of the story. This is true- the film is from the perspective of Israeli troops and no one else, which to some extent dehumanizes the Palestinians and the Lebanese. But still, any movie that causes the audience to be silent almost the entire way through the credits deserves a gold star in my book. I recommend it, but be prepared for a serious and kind of trippy movie.

Other things going on:
- won a game of Warhammer last night! My theory of flying tanks+lasers+undead, nigh indestructible giants=win was proven to be true, at least against Marines. Further tests will have to be conducted.
- I see faeries and their nefarious work everywhere
- studying for the GRE has begun once again
- I have mastered the art of scratch pizza making, and am now moving on to shepherd's pie

Until next time...

"If the bubble reputation can be obtained only at the cannon's mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty. If it is loaded my immortal and inflexible purpose is to get over the fence and go home. My invariable practice in war has been to bring out of every fight two-thirds more men than when I went in. This seems to me Napoleonic in its grandeur."
- "Mark Twain as a Presidential Candidate," New York Evening Post, 6/9/1879

The End of the Week, and Physics

Hey all, welcome back. Thursday was pretty low key at work- I pretty much just sat in my office rearranging things and looking through the massive piles of binders for useful tidbits of information. There were definitely some, like lesson plans for teaching basic comp 1 and 2 and examples of registration forms. So, I'm a little bit less scared now, and I got an idea to request a grant for a projector so I can lead classes by showing them examples on my laptop on the big screen. Should be cool.

That evening we had a massive undertaking to finish all of the lamb that was left (about half a gallon). We headed out to Trader Joe's (my first one!) to do shopping. That place is pretty cool, and has lots of really, really tasty looking things... like peanut butter filled pretzels. Totally started eating those as soon as I got home. They also have beer and wine, and a "make your own 6-pack" deal which I took advantage of. Despite all of these glowing aspects, I have to say I'm not the biggest fan of Trader Joe's. Sure it has a lot of organic foods and what not, but it also has one of the largest carbon footprints that I've ever seen, as everything is brought in from one of the two coasts. I mean, for the fresh vegetables and fruits I can understand as winter is coming (a moment of silence for poor Eddard...), but some of the other stuff just makes no sense. Where it really hit home was the beer. I'm generally the most eco-conscious when I'm buying beer and try to buy local, so it was with a bit of shock that I realized that all of the beer I had bought was from one of the two coasts. This probably wouldn't bother a lot of people, but it does for me. That and the fact that my pumpkin ale had "natural pumpkin flavor added..." bastards.

Anyway, Jason used the ingredients to make lamb green marsala (masala? I dunno...), my favorite Indian food, and it was good.

Friday I had more CTEP orientation, this time with our supervisors. It was actually really cool, as what we did most of the time was discuss technology issues and how they are going to change in the coming decades, as well as the ecological impact of these developments. Along these lines was a really cool video that we saw, which I provide the link to here, which gives glimpses of exactly how much technology is changing the world and what the future may bring. There is a discussion site for the movie that can be found here. I haven't checked the latter out too much yet, but if it's anything like our discussions after the movie it should be pretty cool. At the end of orientation we all said the Americorps pledge to "Get Things Done for America!", though about half of us read "persevere" as "preserve." Oh reading, what hast thou don'st?

That evening I took my first practice Physics GRE... and got about a 3rd right. Oy... yeah, there's gonna need to be a lotta studyin' before I can take this thing, especially in the memorizing of formulae and the refiring of my maths centers. I mean, seriously, is calc that hard that I can't do it reliably anymore? Oyveh Maria...

Well, that's about it. Until next time...

"We could use up two Eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own world and the thousands of nations that have arisen and flourished and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would occupy me eight million years."
- Mark Twain's Notebook #22, Spring 1883 - Sept. 1884