Flashes of Panic

In which it pays to be a pack rat

I’ve unearthed a bit more than ten euros (mostly coins but one folding five) from various drawers, mugs, and other receptacles. I know England still hangs on to the pound, but I’m hoping this may buy me something like breakfast in Heathrow’s Terminal 5, assuming I make my connection and don’t get trapped there any longer.

Posted by pjm at 9:35 PM | Comments (0)

Kitchen without fear

I’ve been reading John Thorne’s Mouth Wide Open recently. Thorne has apparently built his reputation on presenting himself just as he is, because he fears nothing in terms of subject matter. (He often mentions his love for offal, for example.) Last night he had me laughing out loud as he described how he ate a croissant which he knew for a fact was at least five months old, and suspected may have been as much as a year older than that.

And why it was good.

That is not precisely why I am currently using the slow cooker to cook pork in a pool of root beer. But it is why I feel willing to write about it.

(The comments to online recipes always amuse me. They almost always follow the same pattern: “I loved this recipe, here’s how I changed it.” Sometimes the changes create an entirely different recipe. One of the comments for this one read, “I used beer instead of root beer.”)

Posted by pjm at 8:21 PM | Comments (0)

Social media: a recognizable profile image helps

I have a persistent aspiring Facebook friend. I get regular “friend requests” from him, and I always click “ignore,” but in another day or two, or a week, he’s back. I’ve started clicking the “I don’t know this person” link, but that doesn’t seem to be helping.

Now, I’m not terribly good with names, and in my track-writing career I meet a lot of people who I don’t see enough for their names to stick. It’s entirely possible that I actually do know this person. We have four or five friends “in common” but they are all people I would consider public figures in the sport (i.e. significantly bigger names than me, coaches or broadcasters) with hundreds if not thousands of Facebook “friends”, so I can’t learn anything there.

The compounding problem is his profile photo, which is simply a photo of the infield of a track. I don’t even recognize which track, so it must be a stadium I haven’t visited. I certainly can’t pick out individual people in the photo. He might as well have put up a red-and-orange “Stand with Haiti” badge, which would tell me just as much about who he is.

So my suggestion is this: If you’re going to send friend requests to people who may reasonably have difficulty remembering that they met you, make sure your profile photo actually shows you somewhere. It doesn’t have to be a photo - I have at least two Facebook friends whose profile photos are illustrations, but when I saw them I thought, “Yup, I remember so-and-so.” The photo is certainly part of your communication and your presentation, but sometimes it’s the only part visible, and you should make sure you give it the tools to do what you ask of it.

Posted by pjm at 9:01 AM | Comments (0)

Government in defiance of math

In the parking lot of our apartment building there is a car bearing a mark declaring it a “Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle.”

I did some minimal research to figure out just what that meant, because, as you may have figured out, I’m a bit of a crank about some things, and it seems to me that a “partial” zero emissions vehicle is, in fact, not a zero emissions vehicle at all. It turns out, of course, that it’s a government designation born of the need to have something in between a Super Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle (I am not making this up) and a true Zero Emissions Vehicle. I think the idea behind the designation is that parts of the vehicle are zero emissions: it’s a partial (zero emissions vehicle), not a (partial zero) (emissions vehicle).

But it did have me wondering what a partial zero would look like.

Posted by pjm at 5:49 PM | Comments (0)

Loaves

My latest experiments have been in bread. I’ve had breadmakers for years and often feel guilty with store-bought loaves, but recently I decided I wanted more traditionally-shaped loaves. My breadmaker has a rectangular pan, but the loaves are still pretty tall; I wanted to try bread in a regular loaf pan.

I haven’t gone cold turkey on the machine, though; what I do is take a recipe that looks promising, run it through the dough cycle of the machine (which essentially just shuts off the cycle without baking it). Then I shift the resulting dough out of the machine and into the pan, let it rise a bit there, and bake in the oven.

My first loaf tasted great, but I mis-timed the rising and forgot to pre-heat the oven. While the oven warmed, the dough ballooned, and the resulting loaf was a bit fluffier than we like. It was supposed to be sandwich bread, but today I used the last two slices to make the first and last sandwich with it. It made great toast, but ultimately

Tonight, I am trying pumpernickel for the first time, and so far it smells fantastic. (The fact that pumpernickel involves using coffee instead of water was something which had been hidden from me until today. Astounding.) I didn’t give it a whole lot of rising time, but it has risen nicely in the oven. In fact, I told A after I pulled it out, it’s probably going to taste horrible because it’s the best looking loaf of bread I’ve ever made.

In other kitchen tinkering, my ever-evolving granola formula has expanded to accommodate barley flakes. I tried rye flakes, but they were too hard. I have to imagine the miller grinding rye flour put some serious weight on that stone.

Posted by pjm at 8:34 PM | Comments (0)

Twice as annoying as political robo-calls

Because I still have my cell phone with its 413 area code, I am now getting robo-calls trying to influence my vote for the special election to fill the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat left vacant when Ted Kennedy died.

In other words, I’m getting robo-called about an election I can’t vote in. (I’m registered in New York now.)

Posted by pjm at 6:43 PM | Comments (0)

Sidewalk pavers

Like most, the parts of my current running scope which have sidewalks* tend to have ordinary concrete slabs. This makes me a bit more aware of the different ones. Today I noticed a few sections in North Troy and Lansingburgh with what appear to be slate sidewalks. (I haven’t done a full minerology work-up so I’m guessing.)

But the absolute best, in my mind, is a very small section of an obscure little street in Watervliet which has four or five sections of what appear to be marble sidewalks.

* In discussion today with another runner and resident of my town, he told me that the official town attitude towards sidewalks is, “You live here in the country. If you want sidewalks, you should live in the city.” I guess that explains our atrocious walkability scores.

ETA, 19 January: The Times Union on sidewalks in our area. Siena’s recommendations would all be great for running.

Posted by pjm at 9:47 AM | Comments (0)

United Airlines continues to justify my utter contempt

For purposes of visiting our first nephew, we’re flying to San Francisco on Christmas Day. Before you chuckle and say, “There’s your first mistake,” bear in mind that I’d never done this before; my idea of “stressful Christmas travel” is being on I-95 North for the entire afternoon of December 24th. (Been there.)

Anyway, due to reasons beyond my control, I have 47,7xx frequent flyer miles on United. I have loathed United Airlines for over a decade and for a while refused to participate in any “loyalty” program of theirs, but the first time I went to Japan someone else was booking the flights and I decided it would be silly to pass up that many miles. Two Asian trips and a few miscellaneous European and/or domestic flights later, I’ve stacked up some credit for a service I don’t really like.

So I figured I’d use some of it on upgrades for A and me on this flight. It’s 15,000 miles per person per leg of the roundtrip, so we could do one way or the other but not both. I’ve requested upgrades before, and generally haven’t gotten them, so I figured I’d request for the outbound leg and if we didn’t get it I’d request again for the return.

Hold that idea, then: I asked United, “Based on all this business I’ve done with you, I’d like to take you up on your offer to make my flight a little more pleasant.”

Flash forward to today when I try to check in online. The second screen I see says, in effect, “Please confirm your upgrade method.” I am shown menus next to each of our names asking for such a method, but there are only two options, the null option and using “500-mile certificates”. (These certificates are sold in packs of 4 for about $315. This upgrade would cost us 12.) I try selecting that option and am delivered to a page where United asks me for ~$900 to complete the upgrade. I go back and try not selecting that option, but I get a warning box telling me I need to select a method.

This is frustrating me. I go back out and log in to my frequent flyer account. I verify the number of miles in my account and the number needed for an upgrade. I go to my itinerary which shows we’re already confirmed for an upgrade on the outbound leg. (So why can’t I check in?) I click around trying to find a setting which will let me check in.

Finally I call United’s 800 number. I am willing to bet 30,000 frequent flyer miles that the person I spoke to was geographically located south of China and east of Pakistan, not that that matters. I explained that I wanted to check in but that I was unable to get past the upgrade screen. He says several things which are confusing to me—he speaks often of 15,000 miles, which worries me because I’m not interested in one of us being upgraded without the other. He talks about the miles being already deducted, which doesn’t look right to me; I’m still showing 47,7xx on the website. Finally he puts me on hold for a few minutes and I listen to Gershwin music for a while.

When he gets back on, he tells me that because I just created a request for an upgrade on the return leg, he can’t deduct the miles for the outbound leg. Apparently he can’t remove the return leg request either. And we can’t do online check-in, we’ll have to check in at the airport.

So, as a direct result of that thought above—me taking United up on their offer to make the flight a little more comfortable—we’ll have a little more time at the airport in bureaucratic purgatory sorting out just where the hell we’re supposed to be sitting.

So to sum up, I asked United, “Based on all this business I’ve done with you, I’d like to take you up on your offer to make my flight a little more pleasant,” and they replied, “Sure! Here, let us make your flying experience more confusing and stressful!”

Is anybody surprised these guys need government bailouts and bankruptcy protection every decade or so?

Posted by pjm at 5:15 PM | Comments (0)

Sugar and chocolate for Christmas

Over the past weekend, I made four batches of fudge for various Christmas dinners, gifts, etc.. I mentioned this on Facebook and was asked for the recipe.

The recipe I use is Remarkable Fudge from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. (N.B. not every edition of the cook book has this recipe, but the recipe is available online if you look hard enough.)

I wrote up a pretty thorough run-through of making the fudge about two years ago. It’s all still true.

I don’t know the actual history but I’ve probably been doing this close to 20 years. I’ve certainly made more than fifty batches by now. I figured out the rough raw materials for this year’s four batches, and came up with:

• a bit less than ten pounds of sugar (16 cups)
• almost a half gallon of evaporated milk
• two pounds of butter
• a half gallon of marshmallow creme (Fluff, if you can get it)
• three pounds of various chocolate-esque chips (semi-sweet chocolate, white chocolate, and peanut butter, this year)
• and a quarter cup of vanilla

I’m a little vague on the weight for the sugar because while I know I used 16 cups, I poured two five-pound bags into the canister in the course of work and may have wound up with more in the canister than I started with.

Posted by pjm at 6:21 PM | Comments (0)

The model downtown

Since we’ve moved, I’ve had a hard time reconciling my opinions about supporting local economies and reducing car dependence with the actual circumstances we find ourselves in. The contrast between our little house just outside Amherst’s downtown, or the awesome apartment we had in Northampton, and the apartment complex in Colonie illustrates just how many ways we (as a society) have made it difficult for ourselves to function without our cars and our shopping centers full of national chain stores.

By prioritizing living close to A’s work (thus minimizing the miles driven for commuting) we find ourselves in a car-dependent wasteland; it’s impossible to get anywhere without driving, and the near-total absence of sidewalks means it’s difficult to find good places to run and bicyclists are also forced on to high-traffic roadways. And there’s very little locally-owned business, although Troy is doing a laudable job of boosting their downtown. (I’ve already patronized Market Block Books and The Placid Baker, and I’m going to try out The Daily Grind as a place to work for a few hours when I need to flee the home office.

Meanwhile, state and national media have been pumping up my hometown as a model of a functioning downtown. The best piece is from the Portland Press Herald (you may see some familiar names in there) but there was a good piece in the local TV news as well. If you’re planning your summer vacation, the week around July 4 is always a good time to be in town.

Posted by pjm at 1:16 PM | Comments (0)

Josh Ritter at the Troy Music Hall

I’ve been remiss in not mentioning that I was able to see Josh Ritter on Saturday night in a somewhat under-full Troy Music Hall. (Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, actually, which sort of captures Troy in a nutshell: the naming rights to their big venue belong to an institution which no longer exists.) This isn’t quite as close to home as when I could walk to the Somerville Theater, but it’s not bad on a snowy night.

I’m not going to go on at length about the show, given that Doug Rice has already done so in great detail. I was a little underwhelmed by the size of the crowd, and I tend to agree with Doug that Josh is a better show when he’s not in an all-seated venue, but the tradeoff Saturday seemed to be that the Troy Music Hall is an astoundingly ornate and impressive venue in both appearance and sound. Josh and his band were clearly thrilled to be playing there even if most of us did spend the show sitting down passively watching. Also on the plus side was the full-size Steinway which, I think, affected the set list somewhat.

I’ve mentioned before that I always leave Josh’s shows with some new favorite songs, and this time I’m looking forward to a new album, in particular “The Curse” and “Another New World.”

Posted by pjm at 9:00 PM | Comments (0)

Name scramble

I’m fortunate enough to have a name which is misunderstood just often enough to be amusing and not often enough to be annoying. My northeastern tendency to soften my Rs (three of them in my full name) means I often spell it out if I’m at all concerned about accuracy.

The most recent culprit (or victim, I suppose) was trapped by the fact that my first name is often a family name. The Albany County Board of Elections, or some computer working for it, decided that my middle name was my first name, and that my given name and my family name were, in fact, a hyphenated family name. (Not PJM but J P-M.)

Needless to say, I’m getting this straightened out before the next election.

Posted by pjm at 8:38 PM | Comments (0)