personal
pharyngula | January 7, 2011It's a lonely night here at Chez Myers — my wife couldn't make it home through the blowing snow and occasional whiteouts, so she's holed up in a hotel down the road, while I'm left home alone with nothing but the Blue Paddle Pilsner Lager.
It's not bad, but it's no substitute.
pharyngula | January 6, 2011The label on the Gordon Biersch Märzen says, "A smooth, auburn-colored Bavarian lager with a mildly sweet finish. It was originally brewed in March ("März" in German) and stored in caves to be drunk during warmer weather." Warmer weather? I have consumed it prematurely then.
drorzel | January 6, 2011It's really flattering when your kids start to imitate you:
This is SteelyKid playing with the toy laptop she got for Christmas in her basement kitchen. Sadly, not only is she imitating her father's computer-addict tendencies, she's also copying my poor laptop-using posture. We'll have to work on that.
For the traditional Appa-for-scale photo, here she is a little bit earlier in the evening, showing Appa how the trains work:
Appa, having the power of flight, is disdainful of rail travel.
(I really need to do an Appa FAQ, to go with these posts, but the Avatar fan site link will suffice for…
pharyngula | January 6, 2011Christopher Hitchens explains how to make a decent cup of tea. He's got it exactly right, too. Last year we learned how to make good tea using the loose leaf and a strainer, and we've been tinkering with the procedure all this time, and it's true: tea is finicky. You get huge variations in flavor with minor little changes in how you make it.
We're currently setting up an automatic tea maker in the evening so we can just flip a switch in the morning and get a perfect pot every time. It automates what Hitchens describes: it heats the water to boiling, pours it directly on the leaf in an…
pharyngula | January 5, 2011One of the advantages of living in Minnesota is that in winter, the deck becomes a gigantic beer fridge for your Firestone Pale Ale.
One of the disadvantages is that you can't keep your beverages outside in the summer — the mosquitoes will pierce all the bottles and drink all your beer. True story.
drorzel | January 5, 2011Kate and SteelyKid have colds (well, they're sharing the same cold), so SteelyKid is waking up a lot during the night. Since Kate needs rest as well, she put earplugs in last night (she's a much lighter sleeper than I am), and I took baby-soothing duty. So I was up half the night.
I come in for my 9:15 class, turn on the projector so I can project my slides, and the projector is dead. A bunch of fiddling with it reveals that it's not just a blown bulb (which happened Monday morning), but a broken projector. So, no lecture slides.
"All right," I say, "I'll just do a chalk-talk using my…
pharyngula | January 4, 2011Someone thought the dim view of my dark, snow-covered backyard in the background of these beer pictures was intimidating…so I thought I'd shoot the Thompson Pale Ale by the light of day.
drorzel | January 4, 2011There was a faintly awful essay by Melissa Nicolas at Inside Higher Ed yesterday, giving MLA job candidates advice on how to dress:
Let's start with your shoes. Anyone who has been to MLA knows that it is a big conference, and whether you are on a search committee, attending sessions, or interviewing, you are most likely going to be doing a lot of walking. In a city. Often in the cold (though not this year!). While it is certainly inappropriate to come in your Wellies, teetering into the room on heels that are as stable as a university's endowment sends the message that you might not be a…
pharyngula | January 3, 2011Whoa. Orange Blossom Amber was orangey. I'm at no risk of scurvy for a while.
jdupuis | January 3, 2011I've been doing this for a few years now, last year, 2008 and 2007 and it seems like an interesting and maybe even useful thing to continue this year. I really enjoy seeing other people's reading lists (like here, here and here) and enjoy adding my own to the mix.
So, below you'll find a list of all the books I started in 2010. In other words, it'll include a few books I'm still reading as well as a few that I've abandoned. I've been recording every book I've read since 1983 and on my other (mostly lapsed) blog I've been occasionally transcribing the list on a year by year basis. I've…
pharyngula | January 2, 2011Tonight was a minimalist night — I just had a salad for dinner. So when I read the label on Blue Star wheat beer, which said "Water, malt, hops, yeast, & that's all," I figured it would go well…and it did.
drorzel | January 2, 2011I had vaguely meant to do a year-in-review post yesterday, like every other blogger running on the Gregorian calendar, but SteelyKid blew that plan to bits by refusing to take her nap until 2pm. It's also kind of difficult to say much of anything coherent about 2010. It was a good year in a lot of ways-- How to Teach Physics to Your Dog officially came out in 2009, but most of the stuff about it was in 2010, and I sold a second talking-to-the-dog book over the summer-- but there were also parts of it that sucked-- pretty much anything to do with politics prior to December, for example.
If I…
pharyngula | January 1, 2011After a wearying day of snow excavation and household chores, I didn't even look—I just reached into the refrigerator and grabbed the first thing to come to hand, Gordon Biersch Czech Style Pilsener.
pharyngula | January 1, 2011I was interviewed by Wendy Stanley just yesterday, and presto, the podcast is already up!
Also, if you're looking for more to listen to, Hank Fox was interviewed on Living After Faith.
pharyngula | December 31, 2010All alone on New Year's Eve while the wife is away…so somehow my hand was drawn to the hot babe on the label of Acme Pale Ale.
drorzel | December 31, 2010Lookit the shiny:
That's a new Droid X smartphone, and it's mine. I got it yesterday after discovering the existence of a slightly cheaper "data only" plan that is so secret only about 10% of Verizon Wireless employees know it exists. As my previous phone was a freebie LG flip phone from about three years ago that didn't even have a camera, let alone any "apps," this is a big step.
I activated it late last night (early this morning, really), but haven't done anything more than really basic set-up on it. I am not allowed to play with it until after I finish the revisions to Chapter 5 of the…
pharyngula | December 31, 2010Sorry, gang, I know you were all counting on coming out to cheer me up in my lonely isolation — my wife is away, visiting relatives — but there was that nasty wet storm yesterday, and I just spent a couple of hours digging out the driveway and sidewalks from that (-20°C! A four foot high pile in front of the driveway!) and my face is numb and my fingers are burning and my feet are frozen. Now I learn that there is an even bigger blizzard on the way today.
So this is one of those days when you discover that Western Minnesota is not fit for human habitation. I'll be celebrating the New Year by…
drorzel | December 30, 2010I nearly forgot to post tonight's Toddler Blogging photos, which would've been a Bad Thing, as you can tell from this picture. Toddler Blogging is Serious Business:
That's not the best Appa-for-scale picture, but I love the intense look on her face. This was taken in our spiffy, newly refinished basement, which is the new permanent home of SteelyKid's kitchen:
Here, she is holding forth on the virtues of chili powder. Appa's perched on the back of the futon we have down there, because he's not entirely convinced about her cooking.
You can get a better sense of the room, and the…
pharyngula | December 30, 2010The weather is abominable. We started out the day with thick, slushy, wet clumps of snow coming down with rain, and now we've got fierce winds and an icy fog of blowing blizzardy stuff everywhere. So I fixed myself a dinner of baked salmon and washed it down with Fire Rock Pale Ale.
If I close my eyes and turn up the music loud to drown out the howling winds, I can almost — almost — imagine it's Hawaii.