Gnocci Anyone?

I haven't posted in a very long time, so here's an adventure in cooking.

Tonight I had the random inclination to create a dish using gnocci (potato pasta). I've never cooked anything with gnocci before so this was just a random idea in my head. I took a package of gnocci, a jar of Newman's Sun-Dried Tomato Alfredo sauce, some spinach, chicken breast, and cilantro and got to work.

Idea of the dish was this: Lightly marinate the chicken and pan fry it. Heat up the sauce and add thinly sliced fresh spinach in it until it had nearly a third spinach consistency (almost like creamed spinach but no where near that thick). Cook the gnocci, then on the plate put gnocci on the bottom, then chicken (probably about 1/2 of a chicken breast worth cut up in small chunks), then sauce, then cilantro on top. It turned out good, but definitely needs some refining.

First off, I did not have the proper ingredients for a quick marinade. I wanted olive oil but was all out. Instead, I used 2/3 vegetable oil and 1/3 white vinegar with garlic, basil, and fresh cilantro. As I didn't have a couple of hours for this to marinate, I forked the marinade into the chicken and let sit for about 5-10 minutes (it was already 9:00 and I was hungry). Then I threw the chicken in a preheated skillet and cooked covered for a few minutes before I stupidly realized that the chicken would take forever to cook unless I sliced it up. So slicing I did, while it was cooking in the pan and finished cooking the chicken uncovered. Then I started slicing up the spinach for the sauce (oh, this has been slowly heating the whole time). It actually took a LOT more spinach than I thought it would to get what I was looking for. The gnocci was easy...3 minutes in boiling water and tah-dah, done. With the sauce, chicken, and gnocci done, it was time to eat it.

The results: Good, but, properly marinating the chicken would have made this dish much better. Also, a little fresh cilantro goes a LONG way and there is definitely no reason to put 2 whole leaves worth on your dish like I did (maybe I put three...what in the world was I thinking!). In the end, the dish was overwhelmed by the cilantro but luckily still good.

Next time, much less cilantro and a better marinade for the chicken :)

Love Lobster!!!!!!!

I just finished folding an origami "Love" Lobster from John Montroll's Anime Origami for the Enthusiast and have photos, but I have a little story to go with this too. A couple of years ago, I was folding some good old origami and my fiancee was folding this lobster. The problem was, she was using a much too small square to start with and I even warned her that it wasn't going to work. Apparently, my words of wisdom turned into a challenge and a 1.5" version of this lobster was born that looked little more than a wierd 10 legged creature thing. I mean, if you knew it was supposed to be a lobster you'd recognize it, but if not, you'd have a little trouble trying to figure out what the model was supposed to be. So, showing all the love and affection I could muster, I died laughing when I saw the finished product. Hurt, she told me that it was a "love" lobster and reflected the love she had for me, so I better not laugh at it. Well, little "love" lobster only made me laugh more, but I kept it squished up in the book for quite a long time. Inevitably, the "love" lobster had to be thrown out as I got rid of all my origami when I last moved. It's kind of been an inside joke between us and she told me in a previous post that I owed her a love lobster.

Here it is. Surprisingly, despite the final size, this guy was made from a large 9 5/8" square of origami paper. There are so many layers of paper that even this size of a model was a little challenging to keep clean precise folds. After 2 hours of work and some custom shaping, here it is.

Let's Break Some Monotony with Some Origami

So I realize I haven't written a post in a while, so I figured I'd post some photos of a few of my more recent origami creations. Unfortunately, I only recently decided to start taking photos of my work. More unfortunate is the fact that my camera is terrible for taking close up photos. Thus, the pictures won't quite give the work the full justice they deserve, but more credit should go to the original creators of the models anyway.

My recent obsession has been working some models by John Montroll and Robert Lang from some new books I've received (Origami Sea Life and Origami Sculptures). Now, the dolphin is definitely a model that could benefit from wet-folding, but I have yet to really delve into the tediousness that is wet-folding. Thus, I am still enjoying folding models from good-ole origami paper. Here are a few photos of my latest and greatest.

Sailfish folded with foil paper from Origami Sea Life

Dolphin folded with origami paper from Origami Sea Life

Husky folded with origami paper from Origami Sculptures

Now the dolphin I folded tonight. Somehow, my folds weren't quite precise enough and I ended up with a dorsal fin that didn't line up with the apex of the body, but oh well. The sail fish I folded over New Years in Oregon with foil paper and the sail is tricky (thus why it looks a little goofy). The Husky's body proportions need a little improvement but it still vaguely looks like a husky because of the tail (Husky was a gift to my grandmother). I would have loved to snap a photo of the Santa Claus model (a wonderful complex model by Steven Casey that can be found online here) I had to attempt 3 times till I successfully folded it, but that was given away as a gift as well.

So whether or not anyone cares about my dabbling in origami or not, there you go.

What? A Person with Intelligent Reasons for Voting for Obama!?!

Many mornings I listen to the MJ Morning Show on the radio and for the past couple of days, MJ has had random callers give reasons for why they were voting for the candidate they supported. What shocked me was every Obama supporter that called in did not have a single valid and intelligent reason for voting the way they did. Let me summarize some of the reasons I heard for why Obama was the right choice:

• “I’m tired of the way this country is run and I’m ready for a change. Obama is that change.”
• “I didn’t even look at the candidates, I just voted straight democrat down the ticket.”
• “Now that Obama has been elected, I won’t have to worry about being able to afford gas at the pumps or my groceries.” (Apparently, Obama’s vision of helping those in need means free hand outs for everyone).
• “Bush screwed things up so Obama is going to change this country for the better.”
• Something about how… “Obama represents a change in mindset and how that mindset is going to change the country for the better.”

Through 2 hours of callers, not one had anything more specific to say other than Obama is change (as far as Obama supporters anyway). It sounded as if Obama supporters understood nothing but the catchy campaign slogans pasted everywhere and never once cited a single policy or issue as a reason.

In contrast, far more McCain supporters had solid reasons for voting. The reasons mainly revolved around McCain’s policies towards Iraq and the War on Terror, his ideas concerning the role of the U.S. in foreign affairs, strong opposition to the financial plan Obama presented to “fix” the economy, and strong opposition to the healthcare reform Obama proposed. You can argue whether or not those are important enough reasons, but what you can’t argue is that based on their beliefs, they were reasonably grounded in issues regarding policy and had a decent understanding of how the two candidates differed on those issues. There were some exceptions, some racists, and one crazy woman spouting on about Obama being the anti-christ, but the majority still seemed to know more about the issues than the Obama supporters.

Personally, I found the choice this year tough. First off, I do tend to lean democratic in my views and I definitely have never liked President Bush. I have strongly disagreed with the vast majority of Bush’s policies, but McCain is not a President Bush. As far as republicans are concerned, he’s much more radical and veers away in a lot of respects to what the rest of the party agrees with. I actually liked McCain, as well as Palin, and respected their approach and delivery of their issues. Politics aside, if I were to put my trust in either McCain or Obama as a person, I would trust McCain long before Obama. I don’t really like Obama and I don’t like Biden at all. Due to their associations and political history, I find it hard to trust them. There are a couple issues they seem to flip flop on without holding a solid stance. Furthermore, the financial and healthcare reforms proposed by BOTH candidates worry me. So, why did I vote for Obama if I don’t trust him, don’t really like him, and don’t like his ideas for financial and healthcare reform?

While pulling troops out of Iraq by a time-table may not be the wisest choice, McCain’s views suggesting that the US will always need to have troops in countries to fend off insurgents is too radical and oppressive for me. I believe we should not feed the fires of hate against our country by proving to radical extremists that we are a big country that can do what we want and put our nose in places we don’t belong. We should never have gone to war in Iraq and Obama also believed this. I stand with democrats on pro-choice abortion rights. I strongly oppose the Patriot Act, which McCain fully supports, and agree with Obama’s concern to protect civil liberty without sacrificing the tools for law enforcement to keep us safe. While I would like to see Obama’s policies towards energy strive more towards alternative energies than they do, McCain’s nuclear alternative seems to be a poorer choice long term. I like Obama’s approach to education better as well. But really the main deciding factors were:

• I disagreed with McCain’s approach to foreign affairs and the current conflicts the U.S. is involved in.
• I think Obama has a stronger ability to rally international support and help keep our noses a little cleaner from sticking it in countries where we don’t belong.
• His proposed reforms in education have clearer goals and solid proponents to affect improvement.
• With a democratic majority, Obama has a better chance of getting support from Congress to pass his reforms.
• I find McCain’s willingness to forgo liberty and the ideal of “innocent until proven guilty” in order to find terrorists, as evident in his fervent support of the Patriot Act and comments regarding it, scary and wrong. I could gladly give an entire discussion on the Patriot Act and issues related to it, but that divulges from the topic at hand.

All in all, these strengths were selling points for me and my disagreements with McCain’s policies were simply too important to me. Let’s just hope Obama succeeds in fulfilling his supporter’s high expectations.

Fried Gray Hair!

This post is going to be slightly out of order because I will post some stuff up from last week later. Until then, check out the mad scientist! I know what you're thinking. Is that really your hair? The answer: I drank some strange Halloween concoction and the hair just happened.

A Dreadful Sand Burial

A couple of weekends ago, a few friends came out to visit me. Being the kind host I am, I treated them to a trip to the beach. Being the mischievous friends they are, they buried me and left me to die....


Okay, so now for the real story. I felt like digging a hole so I did. I dug it as deep as it could go (due to water) and dug it big enough for me to get in:



I then had my friends carefully bury me while I held my breath so my chest took up as much volume as possible (so I could breath when I was buried). Needless to say after you see the last photo, I needed help to get out and it was not as nice of a process as getting in.

Painting Excursion Extraordinaire

Once there was this guy who had this certain fiancee who was coming to visit him after spending a year in France. After brainstorming ideas of fun activities for them to partake in, he stumbled upon the idea of painting pottery at one of those places where you buy the piece and they provide all the materials to paint and fire it. After a little hesitation on her part, claiming she was terrible at this sort of thing, the couple went, each picked a piece to paint, and spent the next few hours in artistic bliss while the plain white forms were adorned with a world of color and imagination. Turns out the owners really liked their results and show-cased the pieces in the front window for the local world to see.

Here's pictures for the larger internet world to see.

Enjoy!

WHY OH WHY

I have a confession: I am a So You Think You Can Dance addict. It might be because I'm also addicted to dance. Maybe it's that I'm addicted to artistic movement, or perhaps I'm simply just addicted to music. Regardless of the rhyme or reason, the results of last Thursday's show (which, incidentally, I was finally able to watch tonight) was very disappointing. Not only that, I was utterly shocked at the way America's votes went down and I think the judges were a little shocked too.

For those of you who don't know, the show was down to the final 8 dancers (4 male, 4 female), and all the dancers at this stage of the season are excellent. However, after Wednesday's performances, there were two male dancers that clearly stood out. They had two phenomenal performances each while the other two had inconsistent performances. Will and Twitch have not only been fan favorites from the beginning, but they are amazing dancers who stepped up to the plate and delivered some highly memorable performances. Mark and Joshua (even though I've been increasingly impressed with Joshua's versatility)both had a performance that was not up to par. Based upon both popularity and performance, one would expect either Mark or Joshua to get the least number of votes and be the next male to leave the show, but this did not happen. In fact, not only did neither Mark nor Joshua get the least amount of votes, they both got the MOST votes. That left Twitch and Will as the bottom two dancers...which, completely shocked me. Will is definitely the most technically advanced and the best dancer there, but Twitch has shined time and time again with some of the best performances of the season and a personality to match.

So, before I rant on and on, I'll cut this short and say Will got cut and there's really only one explanation. Pity. So many people must have felt that Will and Twitch would surely make it that they all voted for the underdogs. Of course, this reaction on a large scale yields results opposite the true desires of the people voting. But what is more interesting here is what it implies about Americans who watch the show? Do we root so hard for the underdog that we under-write those that truly deserve the spotlight? Don't get me wrong, all four are amazing dancers that have had some amazing performances that I can't get enough of, but when all is said and done, the truth of the matter is Will has had the most consistent and highest rated run of all the males, without question. Yet, Will wasn't voted for. Even Mark himself was shocked he wasn't one of the bottom two dancers. With Will gone, I think there is going to be a hole that will be hard to fill.

I hope a lesson was learned. Vote for who you truly thinks deserves to win, not who you're afraid isn't getting enough love. I too would have been tempted to vote for Joshua (who I'm secretly rooting for...or I guess not so secretly now), but would have suppressed that urge and vote for who I think had the most amazing performance of the night. For me, that would have been Twitch, so I guess out of the two, I'm glad to see Twitch is still in the competition.

And for those of you who haven't watched any of this show and love dancing...what's wrong with you? There is some amazing dance here. Watching someone like Joshua or Twitch who came on the show with a pretty limited dance background turn around and perform dances exceptionally well in styles completely different from their own is something to marvel at. Do you think you could do the same in such a short period of time?

So You Think You Can Dance, in my opinion, is one of the best reality TV shows out there that pretty much drops the trashy drama that fills so many others. The competitors in this competition may all be competing against one another, but they all respect each other. This show I think also serves to inspire people. The contestants weren't given any special treatment and they weren't picked from some VIP list. They every day people like you and me with a soulful passion for dance. They came from all walks of life and worked hard to end up where they did. Any one of us with the same passion and work could achieve the same feat. And even if you dance for fun and have no desire to be famous, the choreography in these dances is delightful and offer seeds of inspiration for new ways to interpret and express music through dance.

So watch the show. And if you don't have the channel or a TV, download the episodes online. Be inspired.

Update?

Wow, it's been a long time since I made a post. So here's a pic of me sporting up some wicked sunglasses to liven up this page.

I should probably give a little update to the state of affairs in the life of this obscure blogger. In short, as an old late night radio host in Atlanta used to say, "Keep on truckin'". That's pretty much the state of affairs. It's hard living in a place far removed from all one's important friends and family and working at a workplace where everyone gets along great, but no one often gets together outside of work. It sometimes amazes me how isolated our lives are and how easy it is to get swept away in the bubble of our own life experience without reaching out to others. The endless process of reaching out and trying to make connections can be a trying and tiring business that leaves one even more isolated at the end of the day when the realization that one's efforts have been in vain hits. So we move on, "keep on truckin'" and try to find comfort or happiness in the simple mindless distractions of media, internet, and video games. As for me, I take a lot of trips across the state to see friends, get a good dose of socializing, and get my dancing fix. But taking trips a couple times a month only goes so far in terms of satisfying the need and desire for engaging and enriching friendships. Too bad there's not a decent social dancing scene in this city.

Overall though, life for me could be a lot worse and for that reason I'm thankful of everything that IS going right. I have a great job, the friends, family, and fiancee I have are wonderful even if I don't see them often, and I'm in good health.

But alas, I don't think I'm ever going to get my France pictures posted and hosted online. Sorry. Time just isn't kind.

I Have a Pet Pigeon?

This morning when I left for work, I noticed a strange sight to my left as I locked the door: an adult Rock Pigeon sitting on the ledge of my screened in porch not more than 2 feet from me. I got up close to it to see if it would fly away and it was obviously intent on staying as it didn't budge as it kept it's eye on me. I thought this was a little strange, but didn't put another thought on it until I came home this evening.

The bird is still here, and it definitely has no intention of leaving. This made me wonder what the heck this bird is doing here. So I began my investigation online. After a while, I think I've figured out what it's doing. It is preparing to nest, though there is no nest yet. The lack of a nest kind of makes me suspicious and I decide to see if this is an adult pigeon or a nearly mature juvenile by looking at its eye color. As I'm checking the eye color, I find something even more curious...it has a leg band. After about 5 minutes of making sure I don't scare it off, I finally am able to make out the entire arm band. The band reads: AU 2007 41903, with the letter 'A' underneath the 2007. I then look up pigeon leg bands and am brought to the site interBUG Homing Pigeon. I learn what the band means and how to read it to learn that the "AU" means that the bird is registered to the American Racing Pigeon Union. After digging around a bit, I finally find the place to report that I found a registered pigeon. After all, someone may own this bird and may want it back, and I certainly don't want a mountain of bird poop on my ledge. So the bird has now been reported. Time will see if I am contacted about the bird, but I'm pretty confident it's going to be here for at least a month if someone doesn't come to pick it up.

So, maybe tomorrow I'll snap a picture and post that as well.

Expedia is an Underhanded Dirty Enterprise

I've used Expedia many times before and generally it is a fast and easy way to find some of the lowest prices for airline tickets (of course these are usually the worst seats as well). I had saved my flight itinerary over night to check on my plans and came back to buy the tickets. The itinerary saved without a problem and the price was the same. I go to buy the tickets....everything is still good. I put in my billing info and credit card number and hit the purchase button and Expedia screws me. First, I'm using Microsoft passport to log in and passport just randomly gets logged out, taking me to the log in screen at Expedia. I can't remember my username password, so I log back into my hotmail account and reload the previous page. Expedia has now wonderfully jacked up the cost of my flight by $80. Stupid jerks. There's no reason for the price increase except their money scamming time sensitive cookies. Yeah, you got my money this time Expedia, but next time I take my business to Travelocity. Screw You!

Ghetto Redneck Scenery

I was driving to Tampa this past weekend and came across this scene on the side of the Interstate 4, between Orlando and Tampa. I'm not sure what a bunch of buried RV's and mobile homes is supposed to represent or advertise, but there it is. What really disturbs me is this was something intentionally planned and probably cost a pretty penny to set up. Who in their right mind decides one day, "Hey, I'm going to bury a bunch of old RV's as a landmark." Perhaps this little sight will make it to the Off-beat tourist attractions site.

Update on Life

Well, now that I'm nearly settled in from the hectic rush of the holidays, moving to a new city, starting a new job, getting a new doctor, my birthday, and the typical craziness that is my life, I'm ready to give just a brief update for anyone who's interested. I've moved to Melbourne, FL, started a fun job doing GIS mapping (Geographic Information Systems) of cities for government contracts. I'm not working for the government, but the company I work for is contracted by the Federal government to do this work. I'm not at liberty to say much else about the job as I have a secret clearance to work there.

Melbourne is honestly not all that exciting, but the beach here is beautiful. I'm not too far away from Orlando and Tampa so I'll be making frequent trips back and forth.

And just to share some craziness that happened at a awesome blues dance the weekend of my birthday, just look at the picture.

Wish I had a video of some of the crazy charades my friends and I pulled at a get together that Saturday night playing games, but alas, those are on facebook and not in my possession.

Overall, life is ok...wish I had my lovely fiancee living with me and wish my friends were closer, but I have a job and a steady paycheck so not too many complaints. The people at work are a lot of fun also, so that helps the days between seeing friends go by a little faster.

Till the next post, and hopefully it will be a lot more interesting than this one.

New Entry for World's Top 100 Most Stupid People

I have to share this because it was probably one of the most stupid but most funny things I have ever witnessed. On Sunday nights (technically Monday morning), I hang out with a group of friends after dancing at a local IHOP. Last night we were there especially late and I was saying my goodbyes to the last person left when two women blaring some Hip-Hop music drive by and stop in front of the two of us in the parking lot. They are roudy and shout at us to get our groove on. I wouldn't have been surprised if these ladies were drunk and high. Before I get to the funny part, you need to realize that this is a very nice and new car of which I can't remember the make and model, but it was silver with custom rims. The ladies were also dressed very fancy and looked like they were coming from a club. Moving on....

These two loud ladies only hang by us for about 10 seconds before they race off towards a nearby parking spot and decide it would be randomly fun to drive over the curb (actually, a sidewalk). The first thing I hear is a loud scraping of the car, a fit of laughter, and a shout of "what the fuck you doin'?". The car pauses with its front tires on the sidewalk, then the driver decides to drive across the sidewalk since there's parking on both sides of it. So, the front tires go off the other end of the sidewalk and now these two ladies realize that this is not a good position for their car because the sidewalk is a little more narrow than the width between the front and back tires.....i.e. they are now stuck on the sidewalk with their front tires off one side, their back tires off the other, the bottom of the car now completely resting on the sidewalk itself, and neither the front nor the back tires have any traction to move the car at all. It doesn't end there, these two loudly get out of the car and start yelling at each other as if this disaster came out of nowhere then yell at my friend and I to help. Being the nice guy I am, I try to help move the car both backwards and then forwards, but the car is seriously stuck and I'm pretty sure their either going to need enough people to lift 1500 pounds of car, or a tow truck. So I tell them sorry and that they probably will need a tow truck. Frankly, I was doing everything in my power not to laugh in their face and secretly hoped they would have to call a tow truck for this error of theirs. The thing more funny than getting the car stuck was just the attitude of these girls, the loudness of their shouting, and the fact they were trying to be all cool by having the nice car, the nice looks, the loud music, and the power to do whatever they felt like. If they hadn't been so obnoxious, the situation probably would still have been funny, but not quite as much.

I have no idea how or if they got their car off the sidewalk as we left pretty quickly after that so they would stop yelling at us to help them.

Wish I had gotten this on camera. It's probably not half as funny as seeing the whole incident in person.

Be Weary of Deals that Sound Too Good

As you might know, I'm preparing to move. Upon conducting tours of several apartment complexes looking for my new home to jump start my future professional career in, I was given the following deal: The apartment complex was nothing special on the outside, but it was very close to the beach, had a very large 1 bedroom layout, lots of closet space, and a nice enough pool. I was offered the place at a discounted price, with free extended standard cable, free water, weekly pest control, free trash pick-up, a free first month of rent, and a discounted security deposit, and the move-in date I wanted. It all sounded great, and even though this was the last apartment complex I planned on touring before making my decision, I somehow resisted the urge of taking the deal right then and there.

Instead of taking the deal, I took care of turning in some new paperwork at my new work and had a brief chat with the security officer in charge of handling my paperwork. Having lived in the area for a long time and having a son who has rented apartments in several places in the area, she had some useful advice. She strongly opposed to me living there for the following reasons: The place apparently has a huge drug and crime problem. Vehicle vandalism is common, there has been several drive by shootings, and recently there had been someone murdered outside their own car. The deal given to me most likely was a desperate attempt at bringing in new customers that knew nothing of the crime problems running rampant in the area of the complex.

Lesson here? When moving to an unfamiliar city, always consult someone who knows the area or the local police to ensure the place your moving to will be a good environment, and be wary of deals that sound too good to be true. I did find a new residence, and while it will cost a lot more than this deal was, the area is gorgeous and has a good reputation.

First Post

I'm going to try this whole blog idea out. I've never been very good about blogs, but heck...I like to have a place to put thoughts I'd like feedback on, a place to share the happenings of my life to the people I want, and a place to share interesting things that I find. If you don't find the content here interesting or worthwhile, then simply move on. If you might be interested, then subscribe to the RSS feed http://blog.elbryanland.info/atom.xml.