AKA Abraham Bacoln

Well, it’s only a quarter after two in the afternoon but I’m already pretty sure that this is the coolest thing I’ll see today: Leslie Levings’ Beastlies – a series of tiny little creatures all lovingly handmade. You can even buy them at her Etsy shop as they’re created. Since there are currently only two listed I’m guessing they move pretty quickly once they hit the sales floor.

I wish I had the inspiration to create continuously like that, and with such consistent quality.

I decided to make this a real Saturday morning by watching some of the best old Looney Tunes there are – the Bugs / Daffy / Elmer trilogy.

Rabbit Fire
Rabbit Seasoning
Duck! Rabbit, Duck!

If you can watch all three of those without laughing out loud once then we’re no longer friends.

Anniversary dinner

Originally uploaded by Brother O’Mara

My parents just celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary and my contribution was to cook a nice lunch for them. I don’t really have much to say about the food other than I thought it was great, they thought it was great, therefore it was great.

Apparently Angie said something something something about me not posting something something enough, but I don’t remember what it was that I was told she said. I’m posting these recipes because I want to, not because I’m scared of her.

Because I’m not.

Peach-glazed chicken thighs:
2 large peaches, peeled and chopped
6 chicken thighs
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper (freshly-ground, duh)
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp honey
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 large peach peeled and sliced
2 tbsp sliced green onions

1. Mash 2 peaches in bowl with fork. Add chicken, toss to coat. Chill covered for 2 to 6 hours, stirring occasionally.
2. Bring chicken to room temperature, drain, pat dry, season with salt and pepper.
3. Heat the oil and cook the chicken skin-side down for 5 minutes until brown and crisp.
4. Turn the chicken.
5. Bake chicken at 350 for 15 minutes or until cooked through. Drain.
6. Heat (in skillet) the chicken over high heat until it begins to sizzle. Add the honey and toss to coat. Cook for one minute or until the honey begins to brown and stick to the bottom of the skillet.
7. Stir constantly.
8. Add vinegar and peach slices and stir to loosen any brown bits.
9. Cook for a minute or two, then plate.
10. Eat.
11. Wait, no, make sure the following has been prepared before you sit down:

Grilled red potato salad:
4 lbs new potatoes
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper to taste (what else would it be for?)
12 oz sliced bacoln
1 large red onion, thinly sliced
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup coarsely-chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 cup crumbled feta cheese

1. Boil the potatoes until tender. Drain. Let cool. Halve.
2. Put potatoes in dish, coat with olive oil, add salt and pepper.
3. Grill for two or three minutes per side.
4. Cook BACOLN until crispy (which goes without saying as flaccid bacon is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord) and then set it aside to de-grease and cool. Reserve 2 tbsp of the drippings.
5. Cook the onion in the drippings until nice and soft
6. Stir in vinegar, olive oil, sugar. Cook that stuff until the sugar is dissolved.
7. Add onion to potatoes. Crumble bacoln. Add that to the potatoes as well.
8. Add parsley. Toss to mix.
9. Put it on a platter and top it with the feta.
10. But first, make sure you’ve prepared:

Pea salad with pecans and bacoln:
20 oz now-thawed-but-previously-frozen baby peas
1 cup chopped celery
3/4 cup chopped pecans
2 green onions, minced
1/2 cup sour cream (don’t buy the cheap stuff)
1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp garlic salt
more salt and pepper (to taste, yes)
6 slices bacoln cooked, crispy, and crumbled.

1. Stir all those things together and eat ’em.

NOW you can enjoy the very same dinner I cooked.

(but I made changes to these recipes but I’m not going to tell you what they were so that you can never steal my secrets)

(also I like just kind of arbitrarily dividing the steps of the recipe. It’s how my mind works, and if the divisions make sense to you then you should probably seek help)

Congratulations, Mom and Dad. Here’s to 40 more!

HEY SO A LOT OF PEOPLE HAVE BEEN CALLING ME ABOUT MY MYSTERY AND ASKING IF I’VE FIGURED IT OUT AND I JUST FOUND OUT MY PARENTS DIDN’T LEAVE THE STUFF SO MYSTERY IS STILL ON OKAY GOTTA GO FIND MY MAGNIFYING GLASS AND PIPE BYE

I have never in my life seen a Thomas Kinkade painting that I liked. There’s something super-saccharine and kind of grossly Gatlinburg about them. They just rub me the wrong way. Then a year or two ago I read this LA Times article about what a jackass Kinkade really is – pissing on a Pooh statue? Seriously? But nothing will top the fact that this man who is known for his garish cabins, waterfalls, lakes, mountains, and otherwise generally outdoorsy (and radioactive) scenes is now offering a Nascar painting. Yes, now there’s a Kinkade for both the missus and the mister. I suggest putting the Daytona one over the television and the cabin over the couch.

In news that isn’t making me want to throw up, I’m sorry I haven’t been taking as many pictures. I’ve been using film lately and I’m not as adventurous with my shots when I know it’s going to cost me money every time I push that jolly candy-like button. Also I’ve been spending more time outdoors going bouldering, which I would go so far as to say is my new hobby. I’m trying to get as much of it in now as I can since I don’t know where I’m going to end up after I graduate and therefore I don’t know if there’ll be a place to climb.

For those that aren’t in the know, and I honestly don’t know where you fall (yes you), bouldering is rock climbing with the emphasis on the technical, not on the altitude. That’s fine by me, since I’m scared of heights anyway. I get to go out and wear out my body (and turn my fingers into hamburger since all we have around here is sandstone) and be able to drop once I’m exhausted without worrying if the person belaying me is paying attention and so forth. Plus I get this great feeling of accomplishment when I chose a problem, a route or traverse that’s too hard for me, or so I think. Then I work at it all day and if I get it by the end that just makes me feel fantastic.

I have to thank my old friend Alex for getting us into it, and I mean us because there are a few more of my friends that have been going just as much as I have. I used to love going to the rock climbing gym but I never felt proficient or even that I was getting better. Alex is a great teacher and therefore I’m learning and getting better every single time I go out.

Past that it feels like I’m spending a huge chunk of my time reading Don Quixote. It’s fun, but time-consuming. I’d rather be bouldering.

Or setting Kinkade paintings on fire.

FACT:

When I went to my front door this morning there were things sitting outside my door. These things were, in no particular order:

1. A plastic shopping bag containing the following:
1a. Dry shampoo for cats
1b. Flea powder for cats
1c. Flea spray for cats
2. A plastic tub, formerly used to hold some sort of Italian pastrycookie things, containing the following:
2a. Cat litter
2b. Hopefully nothing else

So! No note! Here are some facts:

A. My parents have been known to leave things for me on my front porch.
B. My parents own two cats

Therefore I do not think it was my parents. THEREFORE MYSTERY.

MYSTERY I TELL YOU.

For all of you who are interested (raise your hands if you don’t mind – let’s see, that’s … two) school is back in session.

–Final semester of college? Check.
–Only twelve hours? And one of those classes is independent study? Check.
–Reading the entirety of Don Quixote in the original seventeenth-century Spanish (ugh)? Check.
–Two econ professors in one day referring to marketing majors as “those people with crayons and coloring books”? Check.
–No class on Fridays? Check.
–Drizzly nasty rain for the past two days perfectly coinciding with the first two days of class, signaling an official end to summer, not that I did anything but work anyway? Check.
–Condescending yet amusing professor (again, econ) saying, “This is the only undergrad class they’ll let me teach. I love teaching undergrad. It’s like kicking puppies.” Check.
–Overwhelming sense of well-being and joy even though it may appear as though my list is filled with kind of negative things? Check.
–Overwhelming desire to get this over with and get out of town? Three check marks. Maybe four.

But seriously I’m really excited – I have three professors who are all very entertaining and actually enjoy teaching, which means that unlike previous semesters I won’t be bored out of my mind. I only work M/W/F which means that when I get out of class on T/Th I can actually go do things before the light disappears. And no class on Fridays means that my loving and lenient boss won’t mind if I take the occasional three-day weekend to go do something fantastic.

The rest of the plan, just so you know, is to graduate in mid-December then spend the end of the month enjoying the holidays and saying goodbye to all my friends, and then come the new year I’ll be going off to my new job, wherever it may be. I have an idea or three.

Kevin O’Mara: Sidelighting Full Portrait

Originally uploaded by budrowilson

… taking my own self-portrait that is. I got a call from Sean Setters (a photographer friend of mine) yesterday saying that he’d had a cancellation in his schedule and that he wanted something to go shoot. Considering I have many times thought, “Oh, I want to shoot so-and-so at a moment’s notice” and almost never had it work out, I was more than happy to be able to lend a hand.

And the other hand, and some legs and face and the rest of my whole body, actually. I’m pretty sure that all of me was there.

Anyway the point is that I’m impressed with Sean’s stuff. He started out as a good photographer and the more he shoots the better he gets. In fact, I will turn this into a completely biased recommendation so if you’re not into that kind of thing you can stop reading now. I would gladly suggest him for any kind of portrait sitting or wedding photography. I feel I can say this without repercussion since I have no association with any of the major studios in town – I’d send potential clients to him 10 times over before I’d send them to one of the big commercial joints, especially for single-person or couples portraiture.

I think I’m done bragging on him now. I have to stop at some point or his head’ll get too big. You’re a grown person, aren’t you? You can go check out the rest of his pictures of me from today or his Flickr in general.

(and no, he didn’t pay me to say all this)

(though if you are willing to pay me to write something flattering about you, dear reader, I’ll see what I can do)

I went internet fishing today and caught this quote, yanked it straight from the soggy depths. I bring it to you:

My “automatic vision systems” teacher gave an interesting lecture about research on hens. Hens are awfully dumb. They have an instinctive reaction to images of weasels (panic/run) and also to sound (tweeting) of small chickens (herd/care). The researchers made a model of a weasel that was making the chicken noise. Hens exposed to this experienced software failure: they would freeze and stop reacting to all other external signals/impulses until the chirping weasel was removed.

[ comment by SharpFang on the article Magpies are Self-Aware ]

You have no idea how badly I want to test this theory.