and also there's this

if you need to laugh a bit. Again from Dri. She has a great sense of humor.

if I were to fall asleep watching pride and prejudice,

this would be my view...thanks dri!

my favorite curse word

is well known to those who know me best.

a little history:

I grew up in a house where the words "shut up" were considered mortally offensive. This being the case, you can imagine what a curse word might evoke from my lovely parental unit. Since I never wanted the delightful sensation of having my mouth washed out with soap, I avoided saying curse words. My brother, not so much.


anyway, a few years ago I moved to baltimore. Which is known for many fair and foul things. one of them is the artful use of a good curse word. Also, I lived with sij at this point, and while sij is quite honestly the most genuinely sweet person I have ever met, she also has a mouth like a sailor. sij grew up in a house where it was okay to swear, as long as you weren't swearing at people.


(you can say "shit," for example, but not call someone, "You shit." I think this is a nice distinction, myself, and one i follow. one must have a code, after all.)


so under sij's tutelage - I still haven't mastered the fuck a duck expression in quite the same way she shoots it off - I acquired a nice range of words and expressions that would not be appropriate in front of first-graders.


And my favorite word of all turns out to be the word that a lot of people find most offensive: Fuck. Honestly, it just comes flying off my tongue.


so ingrid sent me this comic from xkcd the other week, and i keep pulling it up and laughing. I laugh at the other comics randall munroe writes, too (you should go check them all out) but this one makes me smile every time.










N.B. I actually hate it when people say "shut up." It drives me crazy, and when I had students, it was never allowed in my classroom. Mom would be proud.

there's coffee, and then there's coffee

the best thing about work last Wednesday was that I took a sip of coffee and noticed two things:

1) Arthur didn't make it. His general rule is to dump about a cup of grounds in for every 3 cups of water. I have pointed out that this makes for more of an espresso like sludgey sort of drink, but it doesn't stop a lifetime of his coffee-making habits. Also, he is always the first one here, so he makes it by default.

2) It was beautiful. Mellow, smooth, and delightful to drink. This was good coffee.

Turns out one of my co-workers stopped at Caffe Umbria last night and bought some coffee to share with us. The Terra Sana blend. Oh my word, it's delightful.


I was very thankful. Sometimes it is the simple things.

"Do you have any designs on those bananas?"

-Gretzky

It is really fun to live with someone who also likes to cook, but it is important to ask before using potential ingredients.

Also, it is fun to live with people who share recipes. I don't understand those people who hoard recipes. What's wrong with them? Don't they know good food is meant to be shared?

Dri gave me an awesome recipe for her aunt's banana bread. I added chopped walnuts directly to the batter, and I layered chocolate chips in the middle, because I didn't want them to be throughout the bread, just in one nice chocolate stripe. It is delightful. In this, as in most things, butter is always better.

Dri's Aunt's Banana Bread

3/4 cup butter
cup sugar
2 eggs
1 egg white
3 bananas
3 Tbs lemon juice
3/4 cup oat bran
2 1/4 cups flour
2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda

Mix butter and sugar til fluffy. Add eggs/white one at a time, beating well. Mash bananas with lemon juice and stir them gently into butter/sugar/egg mix. Mix dry ingredients together and fold gently into rest of batter.

Pour into greased pan, shake pan on counter to get air bubbles out, and bake at 350 for one hour.

If you like, add some chopped walnuts or a layer of chocolate chips, or both. Oh, and I also added an extra banana, because we had 4 going brown, and I didn't want to leave one lonely banana in the fruit basket.