Cozy to a fault...but will it continue?

A Scone to Die For
by H. Y. Hanna

I enjoyed this and the mystery was good. While it's clear she's a romance writer by nature, the romance didn't overpower the story. And the cast of characters were excellent; I want to go on with them for a few volumes and see if they go anywhere.

Strong, interesting side characters can make a good mystery great, but if they never grow or change, they get old really fast. I've had to put a mystery series on hold because the same hiliarious characters show up in every book--which is great!--but then they speak and act exactly the same as they did before, with no memories of previous episodes. They remain eternal stereotypes of themselves.

It's like an old sixties sitcom--Desi is always the same Desi, Ethyl is always the same Ethyl, Fred the same Fred--you could shuffle the deck and watch them in any order and not miss a beat.

I hope sincerely this series is not going to be the same. Next up, Tea With Milk and Murder.

Silly stuff for a break

My Lady Jane
by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows

English History Meets Animorphs! (Uh...let me make sure that isn't a give-away...ok, no.)

This book is lively, silly, snickery, funny, and giddy. Call it "Facts gone wild". Starting with a few historical characters and a couple of historical events, this trio of nutty authors draw their broadswords (and brooms), chop up history and sweep it out of the window. Then the characters are free to fly! 

 And frequently do...or gallop, or whatever.


The authors could have written this story without a single reference to history, but I can imagine one of them reading the tragic story of Lady Jane Dudley and her Nine Days on the English Throne and feeling that her history deserved to be rewritten. A lot. What did she ever do to deserve her sorry fate?


I'm glad they did.

Reliving history in the present

The Oregon Trail:
A new American journey
by Rinker Buck



 
Just let me get this off my chest--some misbegotten idiot put "Part Laura Ingalls Wilder, part Jack Kerouac, ..." on the front cover. Stupid. Misleading. Wrong!

The only way this book is like Little House on the Prairie is that they both have a covered wagon on the cover. The person who wrote that bullsh*t needs to go back to pre-school and relearn the lesson "One of these things is not like the other."  Try these:

    1. The Incredible Journey
    2. The AristoCats
    3. Milo and Otis
    4. This book

In case you need more convincing, let me remind you. Little House on the Prairie is a kid's book based on the author's memories of her family's brief stay on a homestead in Kansas in the 1880s. This book is:

We stopped in the shade slightly uphill of the creek and sat for a long while, speechless, drinking from our canteens. I was still shaking several minutes later.

From our uphill position II looked back and saw our fresh wagon tracks on the trail. There were spots where I could see that we hadn't had more than a foot of clearance. We were that close to falling sidways into the gorge.

"Nick, you told me that the trail got wider. But look at that spot, where the cliff juts out. We were almost over the edge."

"Okay, so I was lyin. Big fucking deal. I knew I could thread us through that needle and get us down here alive. Besides, if I was wrong?"

"What?"

"We'd be dead. We wouldn't give a shit."

The Oregon Trail is a blend of history, memoir, and real-life edge-of-chair screaming adventure. Rinker Buck and his brother go out to meet America at its best, finding rancher after rancher who opens up his corral and watering trough to the misbegotten mule team of Jake the Strong, Beck the Skittish,and Bute the Dissembler. They met only a few complete assholes on the way, and had the ultimate revenge of memorializing the people's idiotic actions on paper, where readers could laugh at the stupidity for years uncountable.

This book was so good that I was actually glad to have a headcold while reading it--having to go to bed early made the story last longer!

A learned a whole lot about the trail and the history thereof, but especially this: when my husband and I went out to the wagon ruts at Dodge City but failed to see them, it  didn't matter one whit.  There never was a single set of "wagon ruts," just as there never was a single "trail." The westward migration was peopled by strong, hardy, and free-willed individuals who didn't need to follow blindly in another's tracks. The slope of open country we visited, just north of the Platte, was definitely crossed by wheels. A lot of them. Most of their tracks were invisible as soon as the next rain fell.

We couldn't see them, but they were there. Just like the river, the sky, the grasses and birds. Let's keep 'em around, okay?

And also, keep 'em away from private landowners who want to "own" history and the Mormon Church who wants to rewrite it. Just saying.

Not exactly worth the price how-to to RV living

The Simple Life Guide To RV Living: The Road to Freedom and the Mobile Lifestyle Revolution
by Collins, Gary

This book was not expensive and almost worth it. It's just too darn short. Too many pages are full of "why you want to consider the RV lifestyle" and "why he chose it", and too few are full of product reviews and gear recommendations. The gear recommendations were great--but not enough to make a book.

Example: he suggests a plastic tub with a tight-fitting lid for the slinky stinky. Good idea--except when I ran to suggest it to my husband I learned he'd already found a way to replace the slinky with a composter and a common garden hose. But the book's advice holds--put the host in a tub with a tight fitting lid.

So it's not entirely worthless, but I expect most of the information could be obtained elsewhere. Still, it's amusing.

Recipe Reduction # 31

Enough fiddling around with these "Bread so easy" and "Slow-rise wonder" recipes. I followed my husband's advice (imagine that) and pulled out his copy of Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads.  After measuring the weight of it, I hoped it would disprove my theory that anyone can get a cookbook published so long as it's hefty enough. I had thought it was James Beard before I pulled it out, but no matter.  I have no idea if either of the guys really knows how to teach an idiot how to bake bread.

Mind you, I'm sure they can both bake bread. I'm sure they can whip up a warm, crusty loaf out of self-rising flour, Crisco and hundred-year-old yeast.  I'm sure the taste would bring me to tears. I trust them--

To bake. Not to teach.

But I'll give Mr. Clayton a chance and get started. Here are some early notes, from reading the introduction and the first few recipes.
1. Even though he says bread flour's higher gluten content will produce good results as to taste and texture, he doesn't explain whether there's any different treatment you need to give as you switch between them.
2. He says that the closest thing we can get to French flour is unbleached flour, but doesn't explain what the difference in taste or texture might be and how we might overcome the burden.
3. He says that butter is "one of the most highly regarded fats for baking." But the recipe I chose called for shortening, and several of the others did, too. No matter--I used butter.

I chose the Buttermilk Bread recipe, number eight from the front, and dived in. I used two cups of bread flour and the rest all-purpose.  When time came to beat in two and (optionally) one-half cups of additional flour, until it formed a ball around the dough hook, I did...but the dough was hopelessly not "bally". I tentatively added another half cup of flour and a little more.  Still not "bally" but creeping up the dough hook.

It was time to call it quits.  I probably should have hand-kneaded it until smooth because it was definitely not smooth. I just chucked it into the lightly greased bowl to rise for an hour.

So far so good--it rose a lot!  I gave it a little extra time because I'd started with water a little cooler than he recommends--lukewarm vs. 120-130. I'm sorry, but I've killed two many packets of yeast over the years to start adding hot water it on his recommendation.

I punched it down--how fun is that?--and made loaves. And it rose again!  Small miracle, don't you think?  And it didn't fall when I put it in the oven.  And it browned nicely and only stuck to the one pan I didn't butter enough.

The final verdict is---crust good, texture excellent, appearance great...Taste?

So-so.
Back to the drawing board.

So not so good

The Wonder Trail
by Steve Hely

Travel writing. I love reading it; I aspire to writing it. And this book made me think about it--

Why didn't I love this book?
 
And...if I didn't love this book, then what is the difference between books I adore and books I only tolerate, and how can I make sure my own writing falls into the 'adore' category?

There's no single answer. But in this case, I figured out my problem when I was nearing the end--he doesn't share the intense interest I have in the natural world. Human history is cool, but natural history is cooler, and a great travel book ought to have some of both.  He tries to include the history (human) of the places he visits but seldom any of the non-human history, and he writes best when describing the crazy and zany and fascinating people he meets.  And wow, does he meet a lot of those!

After writing that I went back to find a funny "crazy person" episode, and found this,

Strange and wonderful creatures are what you go to the Galapagos to see. Just in case, I'd brought two with me. My favorite thing about sailing around the Galapagos was hanging out with my friends Alan Tang and Amy Smozols.

He goes on to describe them, and yes, they are truly strange and wonderful. And I get the joke. But

On the Isla del Sol, in the middle of Lake Titicaca, not sure what else to do, I walked up and across the island as far as I could, up steep steps from the shore that're said to date back to the Incas, or even before. I walked past an old church that didn't look much used lately, and a few farms. On the trail, there were donkeys passing along without too much supervision, knowing and accepting,  it seemed, what they were there to do and what paths to follow. Only a few llamas in the walled fields, wooly, kept around for show maybe, or out of deep llama-fondness.

I sat, looked back across the lake. As otherworldly a place as I'd ever seen, but the beauty of it was a touch harsh, the landscape on the far mountains semi-bare, the few boats on the lake almost disappearing on the vastness of the surface.

Welp, I guess that's Lake Titicaca, I thought.

See what I mean? The impression I'm left with is "Welp, I guess that's about the best I'm going to get out of this. Wish I hadn't spent some much time hoping."

Trip to Korea, Tenth Day

Tears--suspense--anticlimax. All the necessary parts of a departure. Fearing we wouldn't have enough gas to reach the airport, Edward stopped on base to fill up. He left us standing in the road outside so we could worry better. (It's much faster if we don't have to get visitor's cards)

We made it within the two-hour window, which would have been cause for celebration--

Except the flight was delayed. By an hour. So me and son and baby One wandered around the airport for an hour--this is probably when I got exposed to the dire disease which I am presently carrying--and enjoyed watching the toddler toddle. Then more tears and more waiting and eleven-and-one-half hours of misery (the pilot decided to make up the hour by abandoning the scheduled route and cutting directly across the Pacific Ocean), then a stinkingly embarrassing mess of disorder at U.S. customs. Despite two wrong turns we made it back in time to pick up the dogs.

And it's over. (Except for the cough, sniffle and ear infection)  I might do it again someday--after I forget the bad stuff. (Airplanes, boredom, ear infection.)

A few random, last thoughts

There are gardens everywhere! Maybe not in the concrete-and-glass jungle of Seoul, but even there I saw rooftop gardens and little side-yard patches.  I read some articles today about WWII Victory Gardens and whether it might be possible to feed ourselves with small farms. Stop speculating, people! Go do your research--and start in South Korea.

Their recycling program was harsh! And, if it works, great!  All of the generic unrecycleable trash goes in special bags that must be purchased. So your motivation is simple--recycle all you can or pay for it.

For all the snarled-up traffic we endured, we seldom heard a horn honk.

On the freeways, speeding and bus lanes (I think) are enforced by camera. Kind of big-brotherish creepy, but at least it's fair.

And by the way, I'll definitely do it again.

Trip to Korea, Nineth Day

Today was meant to be a stay home day, but I developed a yearning for some peaches at the Korean market. Ed and I were going to find it by ourselves, but before long my son decided to join us with Little Ed in the stroller. My son planned to amuse himself by seeing how long it would take us to find it.

He was much amused. I don't know the actual compass points, but if the apartments were oriented north to south then we set off in the north-west when we needed to go south-west. When we were sure we should have passed it, we headed south and I quickly recognized some street construction we'd passed on our previous ramble. And after a minute more, there it was. 

So there! We found it. In a roundabout sort of way.  Later we discovered that you could see the top of the building from the street beside the apartment complex.

After that we just played on the playground and did a little cooking. Not so fun to describe.  Instead, I want to write about something that happened a few days before.

At the farmer's market in Pyoengtaek, at the very end of a row in the least-traveled corner, an old lady sat with her offerings. They were the same as everyone else's--a few green onions, a small pile of vegetables, and a handful of peanuts. She looked at me and I glanced at her and quickly drew my eyes away. It was lonesome down there and she had nothing special to sell, same as everyone but in trivially small quantity...and....

I wanted to offer her charity--just money, because she didn't have anything I needed and I wouldn't be there long enough to cook with it anyway...but that might have been insulting...she wasn't a beggar--she was a farmer with goods to sell. But...I didn't need anything...I didn't have any cash on me...and the others were moving away. I hurried after them and tried to forget.

How hard would it have been to borrow a 5000 won note from my husband and gesture to the peanuts, negotiating for a small bag of them to munch in the car? I like peanuts. What was I so afraid of? Hurting her pride? Making her feel like some rich American woman's charity had poisoned her goods? Why couldn't I take a chance?

I don't know. All that I do know is that I let my own insecurity rob me of a chance to bring a bit of happiness into a person's life. There has to to be a way to give money without making a person feel like a beggar. I ought to have found it.

Next time, there won't be a next time. I'm going to be bigger than myself and if it doesn't work out, there's plenty of "oh well, what the hell" in my vocabulary.

Trip to Korea, Eighth Day

After a short but well-felt jog in the morning, I had the total grandma experience! The kids were headed out to take the baby to the doctor and at the last minute decided to leave Number One Grandson with us. No, it was just me--Ed was downstairs. But he came up later and shared the glory...after I'd managed to stop the crying with a small application of Baby Shark and other kid videos.  The other videos weren't so good--if I had a little one, I'd probably consider it worthwhile to subscribe to Pink Fong, the producers of Baby Shark.

Once past the pain of separation, we did well. We played cars, ate a few spoonfuls of oatmeal, ate bread and fruit, did peek-a-boo, and did all the stuff babies do...including a massive diaper load that I was just in the beginning stages of cleaning up when the parents returned.  If only I hadn't sniffed!

We tried to go to one of the Palaces in Seoul but they were setting up for some sort of concert and the traffic was unbelievable and the parking lots full. I never saw such a mess of traffic!  All the intersections have at least five streets coming together; all the parking lots indicated on the GPS were down an alley at a 65-degree slow; all the parking lots we found on our own were inaccessible or extremely expensive So we came back (you won't notice this, but i just condensed five hours into two sentences) and ate a more than decent meal at the Brazilian Steakhouse, Casa Brazil. I thought I took a picture but had a defect in my finger positioning.

If I did tagging on Twitter this meal would be all about #SpicyKimchi, #PigOutBuffet, #CornChowder, #PlentyMeat although I didn't eat much of the latter, only the bit of chicken in the rice pilaf and the snips of bacon in the black beans. But they had salad and noodles and eggs and pickled stuff, yum! This was pretty much my only "full" meal since I've been here and it was very much enjoyed.

All the fruit I've been eating plus the bit of trail mix in the car and then the big meal on top of it moved my bowels with a vengeance. Back to the potty seat I went.

Trip to Korea, Seventh Day

 



Up early and off to Seoul!

Not likely. Up early means the guys left at 8:30 to go rent a van big enough for four adults and two car seats. They got in a mess at the guard post on the way back and didn't arrive until after ten. Somehow the preparations to get moving with Baby One and Baby Two lasted until nearly eleven-thirty. Eventually we left--who knows when--and drove in the horrible mess of traffic that characterizes this place.
Mountains at last!

We ended up at the War Museum. Interesting place. After a diaper change and a second clothing change, we wandered around and looked at the exhibits. It was a refreshing change to see a war depicted from a non-American point of view.  All I know is what I learned from watching M*A*S*H.



Possibly I was "taught" in my readings on the cold war that it was Russia which orchestrated the war from behind the scenes and it was America who sent troops to combat communist agression. That's not exactly true--although Russia armed the North Koreans, it was the Korean leader who was determined to invade the south and a UN action that fought back. No doubt America bullied the UN.
 


 After all that history, adults were truly fascinated by a vending machine.





It was getting awfully cold by then but we were within sight of the Seoul Tower. Driving there was an adventure unparalleled even by the one we experienced when we decided to continue the Road to Hana by circling the entire Island of Maui. On Maui, the roads were one-lane without shoulders--when you encountered an oncoming car, both vehicles had to squeeze sideways into the undergrowth and scrape sides to pass.  However, on Maui, we seldom encountered another car.

Replace "undergrowth" with "parked cars" and "seldom" with "constantly". Add on a five-way intersection jammed with cars who were determine to proceed at any cost despite the whole mess being stopped dead still.  Wow.

We half-circled the hill that the tower was built upon and eventually found a parking lot big enough for the monstrosity of a van we'd rented.  From the parking lot, we could walk up at 1.3 kilometers to the tower entrance or we could walk down stairs almost as far to take a skycar to the tower entrance. The team chose down--bad choice. Who goes down must come up.




So there we were, in the middle of Seoul at seven o'clock on a Thursday evening. Not a holiday and school was in session. But we were surrounded by thousands upon thousands of (mostly) young people, all heading up to the tower too. On the way up we passed a fence adorned with locks--apparently lovers write their names on the locks and leave them there forever.





It was magnificent. I even took a selfie in the pottie with the lights of Seoul behind me. Will share only to close relatives.

Trip to Korea, Sixth Day

My face looks like a Halloween mask. Nose all scratched, chin all swollen, and a big red blotch in the center. Hmmm...maybe more like a scary clown.

The days are running together. Each night I put myself to sleep by trying to recall all the meals I ate since leaving Dallas. It's a very small number so it should be easy.  My son and May never seem to eat three meals in any one day--it's usually two and sometimes only one. I refuse to skip my breakfast, so I've been having one mini-banana--half of which is stolen by the little toddling one--one extra-large egg, and a small bowl of rice every morning.  It's like one of those weirdo crash diet regimens.
 
No matter--to go to sleep, I usually count One: tiny TV dinner on the plane; Two: ramen noodles on plane; Three: breakfast on plane which I skipped...and then I fall asleep.  Simple, but effective.

This morning we went jogging again. After one circle of the complex, Edward started doing sprints up ahead for about a city block, then turning around and walking back to join me.  I took advantage of the time when he was running ahead to slow...way...down.  Still I went a lot farther and faster than I would have done by myself. He has to get back in shape to take a physical training (PT) test when he returns from leave.  Something like a two-mile run, 40 pushups and 40 sit ups.  Glad it's him and not me.

 More gardens.

 
After that we just drove over to the base to reserve a rental car for tomorrow and pick up a few groceries we missed last time. Also a quick trip to the Korean market to get some fish for a seafood broth. We ended up with a little packet of something that looked like sardines. They had whole fish, chopped into chunks like it was meant for the purpose, but it was awfully expensive. No matter--I love the place. Their fresh produce is lovely--it reminds me of the A&P back when I was growing up.

Edward and his dad made gumbo and dirty rice--we're trying to teach him how to cook better so he can take on some of the cooking while the kids are little.  It's good for him. The food came out well but neither May nor I especially cared for all the black pepper in it. Plus I don't think Korean food is nearly as spicy as some of the Chinese cuisines.

Trip to Korea, Fifth Day

I forgot to mention I bought some red fruit shaped like tomatoes that seemed to be ubiquitous at the markets, in shades varying from yellow to red. It survived the trip in my tote bag back to the apartment and I ate it today.

It's Korean persimmon--either of the yun-shi or the hong-shi variety. It's delicious!

Of the four I bought, I only ate the reddest one. The others appear to be gradually reddening and softening on the counter, so I'll assume they're hong-shi.  The website implies yun-shi are very delicate and will smoosh up with any sort of hard travel...like the travel in the tote back from the market back to the apartment. I don't supposed they're considered "normal" enough to make the journey to the United States.

But that may be best. If people in America developed a taste for them, they'd go the route of bananas...monoculture, standardization, mechanization, overproduction.

So, today. Today I went jogging with my son and made a total bloody fool of myself. Literally bloody. Watching the baby stroller instead of the sidewalk, I tripped and took a face dive onto rough stones. You know that unhappy feeling between when you think you might still recover and when you know you're going down? I felt that feeling. And then I felt pavement.

One elbow broke the fall, but all the extra weight I've been carrying added to the momentum. If my stomach had hit next, that would have been fine. And cushy. But instead my chin grazed a brick and now the chin's all swollen and I won't be posting a picture.

It was a good jog up until then. Left to myself, I would have jogged on back but I think my son was getting embarrassed at the spectacle of my bloody carcass alongside him; we slowed to a walk.

That's about all I can say about the day. A little shopping for hardware to fix the toilet (the soap wasn't quite gone yet), then a little cooking. Tonight's lesson was "pot roast", administered by my husband. He's the meat guy--I do fish and vegetables.

Tomorrow, if I can walk, I'll do a long jog. I may look like a war casualty but at least it will make me feel strong.

Trip to Korea, Fourth Day

It felt odd not to be able to talk to my brother, or even exchange emails real time. At the time I was writing it was eight-thirty p.m. but only six-thirty a.m. in Texas.  I wrote, "By the time you get to work I will be sleeping like a baby.  Hah--not likely. I'll be sleeping like a grown-up.  Babies wake up crying in the night."


Apparently I was too tired to remember that it was only Sunday to him.

 


I jogged around the complex twice, stopping in the middle to use (play on) the exercise machines in the courtyard. Then Ed and I took a walk and ended up at a cool monument called "The Castle". We were welcomed by these guys

and paid homage to the stern dude on the high pedestal.


 

The legend said it had been used three times but the only one which stuck in my head was to defend against Japanese pirates.  Since it wasn't even in sight of the ocean, I didn't see how that would make sense, but later I looked it up and saw that there is a major river outlet to the ocean there. Pirates could have sailed up and moored fairly close to the city.

I saw rice growing--up close--for the first time in my life. (I've seen it from the highway in Louisiana, of course, but never so close I could munch a grain or two).

After all that exercise, Ed and May had to go off to register the baby's existence with some government office and they left both kids with us. Number One Grandson--I'll just call him E Junior--is in a phase--the hopelessly clingy phase. The minute his daddy went out the door he started to cry. Mournfully. Painfully. Loudly. My ears got relief only when I picked him up and walked around holding him, singing and letting him look out the window.

Fine--I didn't mind...for the first half hour. The second half hour of carrying and walking and sing-stepping was murder--I swear, this baby gained twenty pounds in twenty minutes.

Finally he fell asleep and I lowered (okay, dropped) him into his bed.  He drew up onto belly and knees, stayed asleep, and peace reigned. Ten minutes later his parents returned.

In the mid-afternoon we headed out to walk to the farmer's market near the army base. It was great! I bought some spinach for dinner next day and the kids bought a huge bag of hard candy. They'll be eating that junk until they die.  It wasn't that they wanted such a big bag--they only wanted a little--but the seller had a minimum weight.

Year's supply of garlic? I wasn't even tempted.

 

Then we walked to a bus stop and rode to still another market in Pyeongtaek. (Or so I thought--from the map, we appeared to be in still another suburb of Pyeongtaek.)  We walked around that for a short eternity and I ate a red bean doughnut (yummy) and some mixed vegetable fritters (needed salt). 

Then we walked into the rich, trendy area of town to get to a Korean Barbeque joint.

 (rich, trendy area)


 


Here's how the whole Korean Barbeque works--or at least, worked for us. You load up a plate with strips of pork belly (uncured bacon), chunks of raw duck, marinated chicken, onion and garlic and such. Then you take it to a table which has a grill down the middle. You grill the meat yourself, cut it into chunks with scissors, and eat it rolled in lettuce leaves with kimchi and dipping sauce.

I ate a little, by which I mean I ate more meat than I usually do in six months, while the others stuffed themselves silly. I was embarrassed for their sakes.  But then, how often do you get to put away a big plate of thick-sliced pork belly?

 
Between the walking and the gorging, I was exhausted.  I went to bed at 9:00.

Trip to Korea - Third Day

Sunday was bright and cool and sunny and bound to be a better day.  After my usual (for here) breakfast of a banana, microwave poached egg and white rice, I ventured out to jog in the sweet sunlight. It was gorgeous--and imagine what I saw!

Gardens!  All around two sides of us, gardens!  Two sides of the complex face streets with buildings and stores and stuff, but the other two sides have streets that face onto old run-down buildings and lots of empty space dedicated to soybeans, peppers squashes and a variety of other garden plants of species unknown. I saw something that looked a lot like leeks; some cabbage-like greens; something tall in the distance that could have been tomatoes.

They seemed chaotic, not laid out in neat, long rows like I do at home, but I didn't be so rude as to walk amongst them to see for sure.  They were just growing wild and happy and free, tended at times by an occasional farmer seen far off in the distance. Only one house--a fancy place with solar panels and a possible greenhouse to the side--had a garden that looked fairly organized.

So the one thing I didn't expect to see this trip is practically all around me!  I like this place where there aren't any fences and soybeans grow next to bus routes and people spread their chili peppers out in the open to dry.


 
After a while we walked to the Korean market to pick up mirin and rice wine vinegar so I could teach my son how to make Mirin Glazed Salmon. (Spare your laughter at the idea that I could teach anyone how to cook anything.)  At the Korean market we saw all the same produce that we'd bought at the Army Commissary Grocery--and it was a thousand times fresher and riper.  What idiots we'd been to waste money and time on California produce!

Bell peppers, garlic, tomatoes, carrots--all beautiful and ripe.  All fresh and local and lovely. Sigh.

Nothing we could do about it. We went back and made a bit of a mess of the salmon. Tasted okay, but looked hideous. We forgot to make a side dish--my fault. I'm not a good enough cook to plan meals and work intelligently out of my element.  But the whole point was to give the son confidence in his cooking, and I hoped it worked well enough.

Good day. Except that the Number One Grandson put an entire bar of soap in the guest room toilet and flushed it.  It went down--but not far enough down. Many hours of plunging and fussing were expended, trying to make it flush again.  Eventually Edward found a coat hanger wire that we could use to push it out of the trap. You can't imagine the relief we felt in seeing a toilet flush!

Trip to Korea - second day

Last night we had fast food at "Mom's Burgers." For American-style fast food, it wasn't bad. I had a choice between chicken, beef, or a "salad", aka bowl of iceberg lettuce. Since I hate paying money for a tasteless salad, I went ahead and ordered the the chicken with french fries and ate half of it. If I have to do this sort of thing very often, I'm fully expecting my innards to react, negatively. How do people survive without beans, squash, and cabbage?  Without real food?

Today (Saturday) turned out not so great. I was cranky. There were a couple of real button-pushers that made me bite my lips and clench my jaw, and I went to bed at about nine. It appears that alcohol is not only my remedy for stress but also my first line of defense against boredom. It will be better in a day or two. Tomorrow I'll go jogging and be tired physically if not mentally.

It was still raining in the morning, up until noon. It was a hard rain with shifting winds, the kind no one ventures out into without good reason.  When it finally let up I went for a short walk around the complex of about fifteen tall apartment buildings, all more-or-less identical.  And I got lost.

 

Okay, not exactly lost, I just couldn't figure out which building was home. Our windows face on a courtyard with of exercise equipment,

 

so I went to the building that our windows looked out from and tried the key card. Didn't work. Went across the courtyard and tried it--didn't work. Panic'ed and thought I must have been mistaken--maybe we didn't face them but were really just around the corner from them--so I walked around all of the nearby building and tried it a few more times, wondering if all the bad readings had caused the system to disable the card.


By then I was noticing that each building had two entrances, one marked 1.2 and the other, 3.4.5. Maybe those were keyed separately?  I walked around looking at plants and terrain until I was sure I was back at the building I'd started from, then tried both entrances. Got it.







(Magpie cheering me on)



 
After all that walking I decided to postpone the jogging. Off we went to the army base in search of a gate that would let my son bring visitors on. It proved surprisingly difficult. In true Army fashion, they'd closed the usual visitor's gate and notified no one. Eventually we ended up driving pretty much around the entire base only to end up back at his regular gate, the closest one.  There was a building--unmarked, of course--where they were signing in visitors.

There we shopped at the PX, ate lunch (Arby's for them, a Chinese fast-food place for me) and went to the on-base grocery. The Chinese food was even worse than Panda Express, if you can imagine it. And the on-base grocery? Horrid. Okay, yes, they had a great deal of variety and we found almost everything we needed in order to train our son to cook some of our old-time standbys that he'd been missing.  Basic, boring food like seafood linguini with cheese, pot roast, Swiss steak and sauteed salmon. The grocery's--correction, commissary's--staples were okay, but the fresh ingredients all appeared to be outsourced from California and the quality was exactly the same as we'd get at home. How good can a bell pepper taste if it's been bred for the ability to travel halfway and around the world without blemishes?

The other shoppers were mostly servicemen and women. I could imagine for them it was an important link to home, to be able to choose the same products and cook at home just like Mom used to.  But it made me sad all the same.

Trip to Korea -- same old airport

We did it. Made it through morning rush-hour to the airport, through the line for the check-in kiosks, through the line for the bag check, through the line for security, through the line at McDonald's, and through the line for boarding. Then there was nothing to do but sit in an airplane seat and sulk for fourteen hours.

The airline food was unusually crummy.  It might have been timed to shift our clocks to a Korean schedule, but something was oddly off. It matched neither the times we were coming from, which would have been lunch/dinner/breakfast, nor the times we were going to, which would have been dinner, breakfast, lunch.  Instead they served dinner, lunch, breakfast. Odd.

A fourteen hour journey is indeed as miserable and painful as I anticipated.  Only once did the turbulence get so bad that I had to grab Ed's arm and dig in with my fingernails. Mostly it was just tiresome to sit in once place and try not to fidget. After I played with the TV screen for a long time and ate the crappy meal and read a disappointingly short book, I felt sleepy and tried for a long time to doze. No luck--I never can sleep sitting upright. Eventually I realized that the flashing screen of the TV in the row in front of me was making my eyes pop open, so I experimented with putting the blanket over my head with the edge covering just my eyes, leaving my nose and mouth out to breath.  That helped with the flashing light--but I still couldn't sleep.

Finally, too tired to attempt to read anymore, I found a movie to watch. Ready Player One was not nearly as bad as everyone said it was. Yeah, they messed with the plot and "prettied up" the characters and left out the cool part where Parzival had to act the role of Ferris Bueller in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but the special effects were superb and the acting good.  I enjoyed it and didn't pause to obsessively check the clock every fifteen minutes...and by the time it was done we only had one hour left.



I distracted myself during the landing by filling out the customs form. Luckily I was finished by the time we hit the runway. We literally hit the runway.  I can't say the pilot failed to stick the landing, but she certainly stuck it with a vengeance.

We arrived fifteen minutes early and had to sit in the plane for fifteen minutes while the previous arrival occupied our gate.  Then we stood in a line for exit, stood in a line for checkin, and stood in a line for customs.  Outside the exit Number One Son and and Number One Baby picked us up and drove us home in a drizzling rain and horrendous traffic.  It's still raining now.




 







It's a really nice place. Three bedrooms, two baths in a high rise apartment over a parking garage. It's crowded with stuff but well organized--all the toys are put away and the floors perfectly clear.  They probably cleaned up just for us. Edward is not exactly renowned for his tidyness so I'll give May all the credit.


  We're going to the grocery tomorrow so I'll send some exciting pictures of shopping at the American grocery on base. Yippee.

Trip to Korea -- preparation days still

I just demonstrated what happens when you pack your suitcase too early. (And under the influence of The Carry-On Traveler.) With plenty of time to think and compress and choose and discard, I ended up with loads of empty space. Enough space to let the other stuff crash around like billiard balls in a boxcar.  When Ed reminded me about the tendency of airlines to hire gorillas for baggage-loaders, I made a joke about filling the empty space with bubble wrap.   Then I amended it to, “or a big stuffed animal.”

Oops.

Wanting some cheap travel shoes, and noticing that the M&Ms dispenser at work was near empty, I had the inspired notion of running over to Walmart on my lunch break to get shoes and candy.  And maybe, while I was there, look for a big, beautiful stuffed tiger?

Of course they didn't have one. But I went on to Target.  And now I will be filling the empty space with a huge battery operated Pikachu, a set of Jurrasic World mega blocks, and a small, stupid-looking stuffed tiger.

Not so gripping as some

The Drunken Botanist:
The  Plants That Create the World's Great Drinks
by Amy Steward

I thought I'd love it--three of my favorite things: plants, history, and booze. But it didn't pull together for me. While I picked up some interesting tidbits, like how Applejack is made and why it can be so dangerous, I found myself skimming the last couple of sections.

It's subtitled, The Plants That Create the World's Great Drinks and I didn't make the connection th

The alphabetical organization didn't work for me either. That made it difficult to read straight through--it was too much like reading the encyclopedia. As a reference work or something you flip through while on the bathroom throne, it works.  And you learn amazing things about the history of angostura bitters along with tidbits like,
at needed to include not just corn, wheat and rye but also hops, lime and cassis. Details of every seasoning or herb that goes into a Mai Tai just didn't fill me with with fascinated enthusiasm. (Maybe if I'd ever had a Mai Tai....)

If you ever find yourself in the unfortunate position of sitting in a bar when you are unwilling or unable to have a drink, order a club soda with bitters. It has the advantage of looking like a proper drink and is surprisingly restorative.

Alexander Von Humboldt would agree.

Trip to Korea -- preparation days

Gardening in my Roots will be on hold for two weeks while the rain falls, the weeds proliferate, and the gardener travels halfway around the world. She will be staying in an apartment in Pyeongtaek-si, a densely populated little city south of Seoul and not far from the ocean. There may be a few parks nearby, but no gardens. That she is sure of.

So don't read on unless you're prepared for absolute boredom. There are woods and walks, strange birds unsighted, mountains and memorials...and I won't be describing a single one of them. This is a family visit, and the family prefers to sit indoors and stare at screens.  Life goes on--

But not here.

Getting ready should be a no-brainer. I've traveled enough by airplane--although not internationally--that I know how to pack a suitcase, stand in lines at the airport, and use the scary little closet potty with the ear-splitting flush. My son will pick us up when we arrive. In a pinch I could rent a taxi and show the driver our address, but I'm told it's over $100 for the one-hour trip through horrible traffic. We'll take him up on his offer.

But...what to pack? I won't need snorkeling gear, bathing suits or sunscreen. Shorts, sport sandals and backpack with bird book? No. Not on the agenda, although I'm sneaking my binoculars in just in case. So all the sporting gear I need is a (hopeful) pair of running shoes. But I do need a few changes of city clothes.

I don't shop for clothes a lot and it shows. Not just in my appearance but in my ignorance. I set out this Saturday (and last Saturday and Wednesday), in search of a few key items that I desperately wanted to have--shorts suitable for jogging that cover my butt cheeks, leggings in case of cold weather, a loose-fitting nylon jogging shirt, cargo pants, high-topped black sneakers.  And maybe a tee-shirt or two.

I'd forgotten--women's clothes don't work that way. You can't shop for anything specific and in season. You shop for a category, say, "sneakers", and if you're lucky enough to find some you like, you go back and buy ten pair to save for when the first one goes out of style.

The result of all my efforts were one cheap tee-shirt, a pair of gray knit pants, and jogging shorts. Leggings abounded all over the place--it appears they're stylish right now--but there were too many and I couldn't make up my mind. There were a few nylon jogging shirts at the sporting goods store but the colors were hideous. Cargo pants--nope. The men's section had a whole rack of them, but men's clothes transcend style and season.  High-topped sneakers--nope. It appears they're no longer in style...but I still see them on people's feet. Did those people all buy ten pair back in the summer?

The other issue I faced was that I'd recently read The Carry-On Traveler, which describes a pair of nomads who've been living on the road for over two years with nothing that wouldn't fit in the packs on their backs. I was inspired!  I had to take the big suitcase on account of baby gifts and stuff, but I also wanted to have a backpack for my laptop. What if I were to get one of those new laptop backpacks like all the guys at work have?  I could probably store my entire 14-day supplies in one bag!

A lady at work told me her backpack cost $50 at Target (she later said she was mistaken, it was $60) so off we went. I'm switching from "I" to "we" because I dragged my husband along for "moral support." Or should I say, "immoral support"? He will never to say "no" to a potential purchase--best shopping companion ever.  We found Target and we found the backpacks...but they weren't cheap. I fell in love with a Swiss Gear pack with oodles of compartments and features and an RFID-proof pocket for my passport and credit cards. Of course, it was the most expensive one there.  My husband bought a smaller, cheaper one, but it was too late for me--I was already in love.

A week later I started checking airline regulations and realized the carry-on limit was 22"x14"x9", including handles. Frantic with worry, I measured my new treasure--26"x16"x7", unpacked.  The tags were already off so I hated to take it back, and I loved it. How could I reject someone I loved?

More research; more worry. I looked carefully at the pictures of the Carry-On Traveler people--their backpacks look just as large if not larger.  Measuring again, I realized if you just included the bag part, seam to seam, mine was 22"x14". So I went in search of the tag and it said, right there, "22-inch backpack."

So maybe I'll put the tag in my pocket just in case an airline attendant wants to dither.  Or maybe I'll just calm down and quit being a worrywart.

Next I attempted to stuff a travel pillow into a ziplock. Almost made it before the zipper exploded.

Fecipe Reduction 33-32

Vibrant Vegan Double Broccoli Buddha Bowl
101 cookbooks

Stupid name for a recipe--I hope they had some reason for inserting Buddha into the name other that to augment the alliteration.  Not only was it not very good, but it had you do this:
Just before serving, toss the quinoa and remaining broccoli florets with about 1/2 of the broccoli pesto.  Taste and adjust if needed, you might want to add more of the pesto a bit at a time....

Then serve. So basically, I've just made a bowl of this hideous broccoli "pesto" and I'm going to throw almost half of it away?  Am I supposed to eat it on crackers?

The picture illustrates the problem. I solved it by spooning the whole of the so-called pesto into the bowl and calling it quits.

This is the kind of recipe you serve at a luncheon for vegetarians, half of whom will stop on the way home for a burrito at Taco Bell.

Kale Quinoa Bites
by Heidi

Strange. Not exactly bad but worthy of improvement. How about a handful of Thai bird chiles or a red chili chopped up inside, a little more garlic, and a little more kale in the mix. And more salt, of course.

Not trying to be mysterious--theses are just a mix of kale (I cooked mine), cooked quinoa, edamame, and bread crumbs; seasoned with salt, garlic, chopped onion and a bit of cheese. Make into balls and cook in the oven for 25 minutes.  So easy, I think I want to do it again--and try to actually make it taste good.

GREAT DOGS!

Scent of the Missing
Love and Partnership with a Search-and-Rescue Dog

by

Susannah Charleson

Are you kidding me? I was a quarter of the way through when I wrote that note. By then the author had been on multiple search-and-rescues--Alzheimer's patient wandered off, teenage boy ran out of the house and didn't return, report of captives held in a remote farmhouse--and they never find the subject!  It's like she's trying to overcompensate for people's fantasies about heroic rescues against all odds by describing what it's really like.  You won't find that here--no heroic rescues, no tracking of criminals fleeing crime scenes, no mysterious "sign" that leads to a decades old murder.

Actually, they do eventually find that last one.  But I was beginning to think she was putting us on with her fascinating details of seemingly hopeless searches that, more often than not, concluded in "not here."

But "not here" can be very important!  If faced with a street of wreckage and rubble, a dog needs to be able to quickly tell the search team which houses to excavate--human scent "here"--and which to pass by. A negative is as important as a positive sometimes.

After working as the communications guide/observer/aide with many dog teams, she determines to become a handler and starts her search for a puppy with aptitude. It wasn't easy, but finally Puzzle comes along. Beautiful, golden, dark-eyed Puzzle. I'm in love with her.  And in love with this book. It's instructive, entertaining, edge-of-the-seat suspenseful, and sometimes so very, very sad.

And it's all about dogs!

Science writing, reads like a novel!

Domesticated
Evolution in a Man-Made World
by Richard C. Francis

Dogs, cats, cows, goats, horses, mice--even mice? All were domesticated by mankind. Or more often, domesticated themselves in order to make an easy living off mankind--we may never know for sure.  A certain set of physical and mental changes happened in all these animals--tameness, tolerance for crowding, neoteny, coloration changes, etc.  You wouldn't think just to look at them...but there you have it. Another mammal, the racoon, may be just beginning the process of domesticating itself. Can mankind himself have undergone a similar process, as he learned to live with other humans in larger and larger societies?

Fascinating stuff, I say. He didn't include chickens or other domestic birds, but just doing mammals, gave him a heck of a lot of material to synthesize into a book. And 15 appendices. For a scientist, this guy really likes to write.

It was spiced with anecdotes and material not strictly on topic, but fascinating nonetheless. Like,

Virtually all purebred dogs have a host of genetic ailments, from narcolepsy to skeletal defects. Cancer is also rampant among purebred dogs, occurring at frequencies that in humans would be considered epidemic. Any account of a breed's characteristics includes the defects, including the particular form of cancer to which it is prone.

Why? The kennel club. The mandate of the kennel club was to

"maintain" breed standards through registries. In this it utterly failed. Rather, the effect of the kennel club was to massively scale breed divergence, by means of competitive dog shows, in which the most extreme examples of a given breed type were selectively rewarded and hence selectively bred.

The chapter on raccoons and their early steps to domestication is my favorite. And with humor,

...raccoons may have the most varied diet of any North American mammal. One consumed an entire jar of spicy mustard obtained from my campsite.

And here's a question for you--would you ever have thought of rats or mice as domesticated? Why not?  A few species of them live with man and pretty much can't thrive without him. One definition of domesticate is "to adapt to live with humans."  I guess the body louse goes without saying.

One of his central points is that mankind's unique success among the mammal world lies less to his intelligence than to his cooperativeness. Being smart isn't enough--it's the ability to get together and work on a common goal that made the difference. Another, less central idea (that happened to interest me), is his reminder that often biology follows culture. Consider the reduction in the muscles of the jaw and molar size that occurred after cooking caught on--biological responses to the cultural invention of cooking are examples of biological evolution driven by cultural evolution.

And for a final word of humor,

Brown rats are burrowers; black rats are arboreal and good climbers. If you find a rat in your basement, it is probably a brown rat; if you find one in the attic, it is probably a black rat. If you find an extremely small rat in either place, it is probably a mouse.