How To Get People Really Mad

We're currently in Corola North Caroline. This was preceded by a stop in Homerville Ohio. I know you think de-I is barnstorming the 'states in play' for his nascent Emperor of the Universe campaign.

But no we're on a visit to family. My brother has rented this humongous house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The recent tropical storm did not effect things too badly and their doesn't seem to be anything else coming up that will spoil things. This was a great opportunity to see my brother, sister-in-law, my two grown nieces and nephew-in-law. And as we were on our way east we decided to stop in and see Wife's older brother and his wife.

We had a real nice time in Ohio. The brother and sister-in-law read extensively so we had all kinds of deep conversations. They also live in the country in an Amish area where all kinds of food stuffs just seem to be so tasty. It's probably all my imagination.

Before we left, I was telling a number of people about doing this as I have a business things that need to be coordinated when I come back. They all said "that sounds like such a nice trip you're going to be taking."

I replied, "Oh this isn't really a trip. It's only 10 days long. We don't really call something a trip unless it's at least 3 weeks to a month."

I learned this type of comment does not endear you to many people.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Dinner or How I Knocked Many Things Off My Bucket List

Funny as in 'not normal' as opposed to 'ha, ha'.

Last Sunday we had friends Dr. Debbie and Cabinet Lady (I need to change their blog names as one has retired and the other is soon to) over for dinner. They had never made polenta from scratch and I was showing them how.

On the Thursday prior I had gotten a flu shot. I had no reaction to it to speak of until Saturday night when I felt I was coming down with something. On Sunday I had a full fledged upper respiratory infection, as if I had caught the flu.

We were plating everything up and coming to the table (it was around 6:30 PM) and I suddenly felt very ill like I was going to throw up. I dashed to our master bathroom. Nothing was going to come up but I was suddenly shaking like I was freezing to death, was terribly cold and my breathing was labored to the point of being hard to even function. I managed to get on a vest for warmth and went back to the kitchen and announced, "Something weird is going on!"

I collapsed on the living room sofa and Wife and the two ladies jumped to my assistance. Wife was very calm. They got blankets plied on me. They tell me my lips were blue. Every muscle seemed to be spasming. My upper thighs were going so bad the pain was agony. During all this mentally I was very lucid. I tried to use yogic techniques to slow my breathing but I had no control over my physical functions. So you are in this bizarre space of mentally being alert and aware while being totally helpless as your body flails around and gasps for breath.

Wife called 911. During the call she mentioned that I had recently been diagnosed with asthma. the operator asked if I had an inhaler. I was able to direct them to where mine was. They sent the paramedics to the house. Within 10 minutes or so of using the inhaler, my breathing started to calm down as did the spasms.

The paramedics arrived...9 of them! I guess it was the slowest day ever in violent Albuquerque and they were bored out of their mind. Either that or they get a bonus if they arrive there first. I was clearly improving but we made the call to go to the emergency room. By the time I got there I was feeling substantially better and all metrics were improving. Within an hour and a half of arriving, I was pretty much normal They were most concerned with how the episode had affected my heart so they had me stick around for another four hours so they could do another EKG and look for markers in my blood.

We (a crotchety old male nurse and I) convinced Wife to go home and wait until the tests were over.  This 1)  got her out of sitting for hours in a freezing ER room in an uncomfortable chair and 2) allowed me to get some sleep as I was no longer guilty about Wife being freezing in the uncomfortable chair.

By 2:00 AM the tests had been done and everyone was happy to let me go. It took another couple of days to get back to feeling fully okay after all the trauma.

So what caused this?

We don't know. We have three different theories offered by three different healthcare professionals.

Theory One (the ER doctor) - Taking the flu shot caused me to either get a viral infection or aggravate one I already had. The combination of infection, flu shot and asthma caused this reaction.

Theory Two (the Pharmacist) - Said the flu vaccine had dead viruses in it so can't cause you to get the flu. He thinks I have an allergy to some protein in the flu vaccine and therefore suffered an allergic reaction.

Theory Three (my Doctor) - She feels something triggered an asthmatic attack. That can in turn trigger a massive surge in adrenaline causing the spasms.

Theory Three would explain as well why as soon as the inhaler took affect I started to get better. I have problems with the other two because why would it take so long (three days after I had the shot) for some reaction to occur related to it?

In conclusion we don't really know more that we did before BUT we are starting a process of asthma control which is about the best one can do. I am, however, very happy that I can now take a number of things off of my life experience list.

• Be a 911 Patient - On the whole an interesting experience seeing the whole thing unfold from the patient side of things. Don't need to do it again. Thanks for the opportunity
• Go on the Ambulance Ride to the ER as a Patient - Again interesting but not necessary to be repeated
• Go to the ER - As bad as every says it is (in terms of the waiting around, not the quality of the care though they forgot to tell me they were holding me for the four hours until we were an hour into the wait). Definitely not interested in repeating.

 

Don't Believe In The Bermuda Triangle Eh?

Son-in-law 3A dubbed The Tower as 'The Bermuda Triangle of Technology' upon observation of the many issues Wife and I have with technology that cause those in the tech support industry to start their work with the words, "Hmm, I've never seen that before!"

We're on our way east for a short trip to see various family members. (In the de-I travel world anything under two weeks barely even qualifies as traveling at all!). As this just precedes one of our major trips there was lots of stuff that had be done before we left. And as usual the Bermuda Triangle was up to its usual tricks of mischief. To whit:

• Our irrigation controller decided that it was not going to accept any programing no matter how many times Wife reset it. 
• She arranges for some one to come and replace it. They are to call her to let them know when they are arriving. Her cell phone dies.
• In the middle of the day suddenly every email I send through my Outlook bounces back as having spam content. 
• I call my ISP. In the middle of the call our less than 6 month old phone system stops accepting any outgoing data - voice, keyed in data. 
• I have to call back using my cell phone and start all over again. 
• The problem with the ISP is not resolved

Welcome to the Bermuda Triangle

Cooking Up A Storm

I may have given up 'Entertainment Performance Cooking' but that doesn't mean that I've given up cooking. In fact in some respects I'm cooking as much as ever especially as it concerns making things for later use.

The last two weekends have been jammed backed with food processing. Last weekend was all things chile. This broke down into the roasting of fresh chiles from the garden and the processing of red chiles that had been harvested and dehydrated in the past into condiments.

I may have mentioned in the recent past that in spite of some crazy weather my tomatoes, chiles and herbs did fantastic. Not that I get any credit for that since Wife does all the garden maintenance.

When the weather finally got wetter, it seemed that the chile was going to rot before it got red so I decided to do the traditional New Mexican Green Chile Roasting

 After they are roasted, you let them cool and then peel and seed...AN INCREDIBLE BITCH OF A JOB! It took me hours and my hands were burning for hours afterward. The chile is also pretty darn hot BUT it has a very good flavor.

Then it was on to the Red Chile Condiments.

I love two of them.

Harissa - from North Africa, I use it on sandwiches, on eggs, I put it into soups and stews to give them a kick.

Sambal - I make a Malay version and I use it with all kinds of the other Southeast Asian curry pastes I make and with fried rice especially

The recipes for these call for you to combine the ingredients, then blend to a paste. They don't tell you anything about getting rid of the skins that are on the chiles. I solved the problem this year by processing all the red chile into a paste and then making the condiments

Red Chiles soaking

 Ground up chile with all the skins on the left and then the nice smooth silky skinless paste on the right

This weekend I was processing smoked meat and making Southeast Curry Pastes

I have been on a quest for making pulled pork. I'm getting very good with the smoker as far as getting the right flavor balance. Essentially what I do is for all large cuts of meat, I brine them with the BBQ rub spices in the brine and no rub on the meat when it goes in the smoker. For thinner cuts of meat, I use the rub only but let the rub sit on the meat overnight before I smoke.

As the smoker doesn't work well in cold weather and with another big trip coming up and the fact that once you turn the smoker on you use the same amount of energy whether you do one piece or you fill the thing up, I decided to go whole hog (ha, ha, pun intended) and fill it up. I had 15 pounds of pork shoulder for the pulled pork and two full racks of spare ribs (I like them better than the baby back ribs)

To get the meat to right internal temperature for it to 'pull' easily, you have to smoke it for around 12 to 13 hours. So I was up at 4:00 AM to start the smoker and get up to temperature and had the shoulders on at 5:30 AM. The ribs take about 7 hours so they went on at 11 AM. I've learned to add an hour to all the estimates of the times I've found on line. The results were really spectacular (he says with extreme modesty).

Meat at the end of the smoking process

One plate of smoked meats and sides

These meats freeze really well. The ribs in particular, we can just take out a couple each, let them defrost for a couple of hours and then heat them up in the microwave.

The last thing I did was make Malay and Cambodian Curry Pastes. The bugaboo here as been getting these to be smooth. Going on line, everyone says that the food processor just doesn't do it. You end up with a grainy product and the flavors don't amalgamate well. But if you try to do it the old fashioned way of pounding everything in a mortar and pestle it takes for ever and it still is hard to get all those hard roots (ginger, galangal, tumeric, garlic, shallots) to become a paste. So what I did this time is grated every thing first. Since a lot of ingredients were in the freezer, I by accident found that they grate much easier (especially the lemongrass) if they are frozen. The result were my best textured curry pastes yet. 

(Sorry no pictures)

The Purge

I speak not of any elimination diet or any weirdness like that. I speak of the ghost of Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin's dreaded head of the Secret Police who knew a thing or two about purges (until the sad day...well sad for him...when he got purged). For the ghost of Beria is doing its thing right here in the Tower! It has taken over Wife!

I blame my in-laws. They have been on a semi-spiritual quest to get the clutter out of their lives for years now. They read books about decluttering. They get together and help each other to declutter. They put up blog post congratulating themselves on decluttering.

Wife does none of this...no books...no pep talks...no mutual support activity. She just ruthlessly and efficiently goes through rooms eliminating whole closets, drawers, file cabinets as if they were nothing more than inconvenient political opponents leaving to me the gruesome work of hauling out the purged to the trash bins.

I'm pretty sure because of the blood connection all that semi-spiritual work done by her relatives had the unforeseen consequence of awakening this ghost of Beria within her. One can only hope the spouses aren't on the list of things that are deemed 'no longer necessary'.

Learning The Truth Of Mentoring

I have recently received a promotion from Camera Sherpa to Photographic Novice 2nd Class.  This does not mean that I have been freed of my duties as Camera Sherpa. But it does mean that I am allowed now to have my own camera and do some of my own non-cell phone pictures.

Some background is in order.

Wife in her benevolence noted a number of years ago that her  trusty Camera Sherpa was looking a bit long in the tooth. He was having more aches and pains from carrying the huge bag of lenses and other camera paraphernalia. So she decided to look for a mirror-less camera to replace her beloved Nikon. This led to purchasing an Olympus which is indeed much less heavy both in terms of the camera body and its lenses. But the Olympus never really won her heart.

Also as time went on, Wife started to get the idea that it would be nice to have someone around that would share her passion for photography. After doing a very, very thorough search throughout our household, multiple times, over a number time periods, she kept coming to the conclusion that there was not a lot of choices out there as to the person who could fill this role. It had to be de-I.

She floated many trial balloons that didn't really get the desired result. However, as the fullness of semi-retirement lifestyle came upon de-I and as the influence of Wife's photographic knowledge started to take root in his meager cell phone pictures, de-I began to come around to the idea. But there was the problem that there still was only one camera.

Then like a deus ex machina Nikon came out with a new electronic SLR that was much lighter. Wife was in love again. With new camera in hand, the Olympus was now available for de-I. But what was going to be required for all this to work?

• Photo editing software needed to be put on de-I's computer
• Had to figure out how to even use the Olympus in a minimal sense
• Needed to figure out how to transfer images from the camera to de-I's computer

With all this, there was the challenge of de-I being a MAC user and Wife being a PC user. de-I however looked forward to having the interaction that would come from the knowledgeable Wife guiding him, teaching him, passing on her knowledge to him.

The first sessions showed just how this relationship was going to unfold.

"Here," Wife said, "This is the stuff for the editing software. There are directions in the box and you can web search if there are any problems. Here's the camera. You can find the instruction book in the cabinet and web search as necessary. I have things I need to do."

Clearly the 'closeness', 'interaction', and 'passing on of knowledge' has a different meaning for Wife.

I See The Future...And It Meows

NO! I am not contemplating getting a cat! Nothing that requires any ongoing care (like pets, house plants, etc.) will ever be part of the semi-retired, transitioned state while we are committed to extensive traveling.

What I AM talking about is my personal future...What I aspire to when physically I can't do the semi-retired, transitioned state as currently defined. This is important. I am a goal oriented person and while I am incredibly content with the way things are now, you have to be realistic and know that physically something comes up that will impede the ability to continue in this state.

But I think I have come up with an idea that would really fit who I am and what I like and would work in a state where I had much less energy and mobility than I have now.

I plan to become a cat.

Not a kitten. Yuck all that running around and playing would never do. Not a mature cat prowling the neighborhood looking to mate, fight, eat, get into trouble. That would not be appropriate. I envision an old, overweight, cantankerous cat that does just enough to be kept around and loved in spite of its cantankerous nature.

The realization that this was a perfect role for the future came about by accident. It started with sleeping. Over the last few years my sleep patterns changed and I now can only sleep 4-5 hours at one shot in the evening. I offset this by getting an afternoon nap. But often if I was up at 4 AM (not unusual if you're going to sleep between 11 and Midnight and only sleeping 4-5 hours), I would meditate or do yoga and it would still be 5:30 to 6:00 AM and I would be drowsy. So I added a morning nap.

Then came my discovery of massages. I found that I really liked just laying there and having some one touch me.

As I imagined a future where my ambition and drive was much less, I tried to find a role that would encompass a lower level of activity that would still be enjoyable. That's when it came to me. I should become a cat. Older cats spend much of the time sleeping or napping. I'm totally good with that. When they want it, they will seek attention particularly to be petted. I'm totally good with that too. I wouldn't have a problem playing around with small rodents until they died. They'd have to be pretty slow rodents though.

I see some challenges however. Purring. I can't purr. I'm pretty sure if I want the stroking I'm going to need to purr. I don't know if anyone wants you to spit up fur balls but it seems to be an intrinsic part of the role. And then there is the whole grooming with ones tongue. That seems to require a degree of flexibility that has totally escaped my aged body.

But anything worth having is worth working for. I have actually bounced this concept by a number of women that I know and have gotten nothing but positive feedback. Clearly I'm tapping into a virgin marketplace here.