Song-a-Day May: Secondary Infection

If yesterday and today are any indication, Schmitty and I will need to become far more efficient if we want to succeed in our compose-a-song-every-day-this-month venture. Well, that, or less particular. Regardless of the original cause, the effect is that we spent literally hours each day trying to put together these tunes. HOURS.

Today's endeavor builds on the continued inspiration from yesterday's bottle, though not as an instrument. This time, Schmitty got to thinking about how, back in the day, guitar slides used to be made from the necks of glass bottles like the one we were blowing across yesterday. Thus, today's song incorporates slide guitar on the lead track, as performed by the Schmitty. Day 2 also features a new guitar--you already met Josie and Gretchen yesterday; today we included Riot (short for the Red Riot). Riot is an electric guitar, which meant plugging directly into the computer for recording purposes, which was great except for the resulting super audio leveling win.

I got off easy today; I just played the baseline. Regardless, have a listen!

The idea was something like an old man on a porch noodling on slide guitar, dreaming of better times, pondering the choices he made such that he ended up sweaty and alone with his guitar. Or something.

(I really must apologize once again. But, you know, the point is learning. Maybe by the end of the month we'll manage something mediocre!)

Does my desire to celebrate a mathematical constant make me a nerd?

So tomorrow is pi day (March 14th, get it? celebrate at 1:59?), and, not being the imaginative sort, I like to celebrate pi day with pie. Last year I made pie for every meal, but I am just not feeling that ambitious this year, so I settled on making two pies and bringing them into work. I decided on an old school mixed berry pie (read: I couldn't pick between cherry and blueberry, so I just threw both in there, and some blackberries to make it seem intentional), cornstarch thickened, and crust from scratch (of course, adoxograph would never forgive me if I did otherwise. For that matter, I would never forgive myself if I did otherwise, so it kind of works out).

That pie happened like this:

First came crust assembly, following a recipe adoxograph gave me about a gazillion months ago. I always have trouble with pie crusts because I have hot hands, and the butter wants to go all melty. It probably doesn't help that I am impatient.
While I was letting the dough rest (have to give the starches time to hydrate, man!), I prepped the filling, which was just frozen fruit, a little butter, a little salt, about a quarter cup of sugar, almond extract, and that corn starch I mentioned earlier.Oh yeah. And there's a graham cracker crust back there. Ignore that for now.

Once the filling was prepped, I rolled out and blind baked the bottom crust. While the blind baking happened, I rolled out the top crust. Then the blind baking was done, and I filled the pie...
...then placed the top crust and cut the thematically appropriate vent. SYMBOLIC!
That went into the oven, allowing me to focus on the other pie.

Oh, the other pie!

See, a few weeks ago, I had an idea, which is always a dangerous thing. And not just any idea, mind. A pie idea. Or piedea, I suppose. And it was a majestic piedea. See, it's Easter, and Easter means Peeps. Peeps are marshmallows, right? And if you'll recall from my thingaday posts, I'd been making toaster oven s'mores. Do you see where I am going with this?

Yeah, that's right. It's an Easter S'more Peep Massacre pie.

So you already saw the graham cracker crust resting idly alongside the berry filling, but here's another shot of that, for fun. I also made a chocolate custard while the dough for the other pie hydrated (no action shots on that; haven't yet worked out how to stir constantly and take a photo simultaneously). That cooled while the berry pie was baking, and then I proceeded to fill the graham cracker crust with the custard. Then came the Peeps. I bought four colors, and arranged them on top of the custard in the pie (oh, and check the completed berry pie. NICE).They look so innocent.
I started wondering whether they knew what was about to happen next. It was about at this point when I started laughing hysterically.
See, here's the thing: it's not a s'more if the marshmallow isn't toasted.

Thank goodness my dear friend was willing to loan me his kitchen torch.Note: Peeps do catch fire, just as you'd expect. Also those freaky brown dot eyeballs are not nearly as sturdy as I thought they would be.I have to say, I feel a little bad for melting their tiny faces off. But it had to be done. For science.

Unstructured

Today I had a long conversation with my favorite co-conspirator at work about the concept of a comprehensive list of human skills, and how such a thing could be used as the basis for a tool that would help you identify the right person to do a job you had--and it could be any job, from debugging code for a meteorological simulation, to figuring out what that noise your car is making means, to roofing your house, to separating your stuck Lego bricks. If you could completely characterize someone's skill set and the skills necessary (both in terms of technical know-how and social capabilities), then in theory you could find someone who perfectly matched your stuff-doing needs.

Unsurprisingly, this got me thinking about what my own personal skill list would look like (knitting, crocheting, neuroscience, note-taking, reading for comprehension, understanding people's underlying motivations, flirting, and swing dancing would all be on there in various places), which got me thinking about the nature of intelligence, which got me thinking about IQ tests. Which brings us to today's thingaday.

You know those questions on IQ tests where they show you a flat diagram, and then ask, "if this was folded at the indicated creases, which of the following three-dimensional shapes would the folding produce?"

I decided to do that with fabric.



I took those pieces (well, except for three of the really square ones, because it was already taking longer than I expected and I decided to leave those out) and sewed them together along their edges until I ended up with just a small hole left, then turned it inside out, stuffed it, and sewed off that last hole. It turned out that if you folded up those bits of fabric along the seams, the resultant three-dimensional shape would be this:


I think I am going to call him George.

Don't judge George.

It's not his fault.

Incidentally, using one hand to run the foot pedal while the other hand guides the fabric is a pretty suboptimal sewing machine usage arrangement. Surprisingly, though, it is not so suboptimal that I am motivated to acquire a desk.

An auspicious beginning...

Happy February!

So I went to register for Thingaday and couldn't because of random computer glitch that was annoying. That sister o' mine said that I should just do it on our blog. Hey, there's a thought... and much less pressure if I skip a day.

At work, I pondered, what shall I make today? Which was ironic, considering the job, and in particular the job today. Today's work involved making a (I kid you not) $1800.00 birthday cake for a thirteen year old. This involved fashioning a crown shaped cake top out of sugar, fondant, buttercream, a bundt pan, a wire rack, cake boards, and masking tape. We pulled it off, although I still say that red and fuschia pink DO NOT MATCH. Three giant cake tiers, cake stand, and crown are layered together, and loaded into the boss's wife's car (a corvette wouldn't work for this, so he had to borrow that car). I am elected to join boss in the delivery process.

Of course, the trip there involves many sudden starts and stops, sharp curves, speed bumps, and my job is to say if the cake slips. All is well until boss gets impatient and tries to zip around a car trying to turn left. Splooty. The cake slides off the cake stand, into the hatchback door. Of course, the part that hit is the front of the cake. The good news is the cake holds together - we can repair it, we have the technology!

And so I found myself piping buttercream on top of fondant in the back of this SUV to cover the splooted parts, then holding the cake on the cake stand while trying not to mess up anything else for the harrowing remainder of the trip to the event. We got it in, got it down in place, and RAN for the door.

I got home a good while later, thanks to 5 o'clock Friday commute times, and realized I had to still make something. I made cheeseburgers appear in my hand that someone else cooked. Does that count?

Ah well, there is still time...

Apparently, this is shnoogglly

No, that is not my word. But he decided on a blanket pattern... now I need to start collecting yarn. At least it is only seven colors.