Today, while Ph. and I were throwing around a lacrosse ball in Thornden Park,
the good people from the USPS left a parcel at the door.  Ph. found it when
he ran back to the apt. to get a baseball glove because, after two catches, I
was already whining that the lacrosse ball was stinging my sensitive paws,
especially the one left with blister from yesterday’s Festival of Plunge (I
*did* eventually clear the drain last night, and then I cleaned the tub just to
remind the bathroom fixtures who’s in charge of the show).  And inside the
package?  A double-bagged pound of

berbere powder and two handwritten notes, one each from good friends and
former colleagues back in KC,

E. and

M.  The berbere of April has arrived.  How can I do anything
but cook some for the Final Four tomorrow? 

Which reminds me.  You know two weeks ago when I flew into Rochester? 
The guy who drove me all the way to Syracuse knew all about the Ethiopian
restaurants in Rochester.  And he knew how to make

injera.  Behind all of that complaining, I got to talk for 90 minutes
about how to make injera.  Nah, still not sure whether I’ll have time to
give it a try tomorrow, but I can make the sauce either way.

Other than celebrating the berbere of April, I’ve used up the better part of one good day smoothing out a
proposal for the
Contesting Public Memories conference here at SU in the fall.  Read a
few weblogs.  Goofed around with a new-but-barely-used miniature web cam. Wrote a few lines for an independent study proposal. Ate some Ruffles.
Yeah, that’s about all.  It’s going to be a busy month; no need to
over-exert myself on the first day, right?

Time for a quick entry while dinner’s re-heating.  It’s Cream of
Cleaned-Out-The-Veggie-Drawer soup–a household favorite.  A second night
of steamy goodness.  Before D. from the grad program left on a jet-plane to
California a few days ago, she dropped a bag of produce by on the way out of
town.  What will we do with this?  So I boiled it up,
blended-blended, added salt and a splash of milk…soup.  Broccoli, chard,
cabbage, potatoes, onions, Brussels sprouts (straight from the stalk).  A
sprinkle of grated sharp cheddar.

I was wrong.  Not enough time.  Insert soup-eating break here.

Tagged along with D. today on various shopping errands, which meant, of
course, that once my chronic mall lethargy started acting up, I just stood back,
gawked at all the obligatory spending–people buying up all kinds of
stuff.  Now where did I put my other Mastercard?.  Meanwhile,
while D. looked hard for relevant stuff, I zeroed in on four stand-out
gifts–out-standing because I would’ve have like this stuff way back when I was
a kid.  Four things: Wiggles
guitar, Hot Wheels Slimecano,
Origami desk
calendar, (Everlasting?) Gobstopper Candy Canes, fresh from Wonka’s
factory. And so I splurged on the canes.  Not like we had any on the tree
yet, anyway.

The best part of the holiday break: I can feel the blood rushing back. 
Not blog mojo, exactly, but the peace of writing just for the heckuvit. Need to
get better at finding rhythms, though, and managing the writing load whilst in
the throes of Semester. 

Last bit: as Collin
bakes goodies, as Krista
searches for a jus-right tree, as the blogosphere’s newest Jen
iPod-ificates, and as…and as…and as…the online channels seem
wonderfully alive.  Because I respect C.’s withholding of recipes (hey, it
wouldn’t be magic if just anyone could work it), I thought I’d post one
of my own.  Okay, one of my mom’s.  Not cookies technically, depending
on how you define cookies (holiday treat?  heated, cooled, and tasty?
sugar? process? warming effect?).  Whatever it is, whiskey slush makes it
merrier.

Whiskey Slosh or Whiskeee! Your Worries Away,
Frigidaire Style
Together, mix
1 3/4 c. whiskey or 1 pint, + or – a splash
1 large (12 fl.oz.) can frozen orange juice
1 large (12 fl.oz.) can frozen lemonade
3 tea bags or 2 c. of hot tea (pref. generic Lipton to anything
flavored)
1 1/2 c. granulated sugar (joker on TV just said something about subbing
applesauce for sugar in holiday goodies…not recommended here)
7 c. water
Stir.
Dump in a plastic bowl. Into the freezer until shavably firm (a few hours).  Scoop into glasses,
bowls, etc. 

It has been at least a year since I made a batch, but D. asked today if I’d
stir some up.  For more exotic combos, sub out the OJ or lemonade with
other citrous frozen concentrates (pineapple juice or orange-straw-banana if
you’re adventurous…avoid grape). Half batch: divide all ingredients by two.
And now that I think of it, by the rule of seasonal logic, this is probably a
summertime drink. All the same.  Summery somewhere (sure n’heck not
CNY).  Cheers. 

Twenty second eatery reviews:
1.  The Varsity.  Perfectly bad food.  Mmm. 
Affordable pizza by the slice, cheap beer in plastic cups, curious and
not-too-spicy wing sauce, an environ slathered in Syracuse memorabilia. 
Recommended by R. Brecke, the only SU alum on the faculty at my current U. 
And we ate there twice today: lunch and dinner.  Cholesterol?  No
worry.  All hospitals between the restaurant and the hotel.  Plus we
walked the long way back through campus this evening, stopping through Crouse
Hall to remember where things were and to read some of the postings and messages
on office doors.   
2. Munjed’s Middle Eastern Cuisine.  Lunched in the Westcott district yesterday. 
Ph. and I chomped spilly pockets of beef-lettuce-Mediterranean sauce.  Good
eats.  We’ll definitely be back.  D. tried out some kind of chicken on
a bed of hummus.  Different.  She would’ve ordered chicken and rice,
but they only serve it on Friday and Saturday.  Cool when restaurants have
odd menus with some stuff for specific days. 
3.  Genesee Inn continental breakfast.  Fruit, cereal, juice, coffee,
yogurt–name it.  All while looking out from the sixth floor concierge room
of the recently renovated hotel.  Genesee Inn’s a good fit.  Close to
campus (four blocks up the hill), clean.
4.  Alto Cinco in Westcott.  We almost ate there for lunch yesterday,
but it was so crowded that we slipped next door to Munjed’s.  A.C. is
popular; it was crowded when we returned in the evening (just down from T. &
T.’s house).  They serve handmade Mexican food.  Lots of choices on
the menu.  I tried the chicken mole.  Not bad, but next time I’ll try
something other than the mole.  The catfish burrito or chili relleno thing,
maybe.

Other stuff:  D. and I started the day at the OCM-Boces admin offices on
Thompson Street (just south of the airport).  Drove up there because D.’s
calls from Missouri have been perfectly futile and we thought a drop-in would
get us closer to certification.  Missouri and New York don’t have a
reciprocity agreement, so there’s more processing involved.  Funny, we
chased around from building to building before we were referred to an elusive
"Elaine" in building A.  At the door, they pointed us to the conference
room, told us we could call "Elaine" at Ext. 6213.  "Elaine doesn’t see
people," said Doordesk.  "Sorry."  Surprise that Oz author L.
Frank Baum is from Chittenango, just a few minutes up the road?

An older couple in a minivan pulled up to a stop sign, rolled down a window,
and asked me where the Genesee Inn was.  "Go down to that light, take a
right, it’ll be on your right."  Sort of a turning point to give out
directions in a new town–especially considering that I was the one
puzzling over directions to the same hotel just three days ago. 

We formalized an offer on a house this afternoon.  Will see where that
leads.  Figure it’s a toss-up since another offer was promised around the
same time.  Should know more by the end of next week. Tomorrow we’ll snake
back through Western New York and Ontario to Detroit.  Rest of the drive on
Saturday.  May usual blogging resume before long (remember the good
ol’ usual days at EWM?).

Detroit-Indiana, Eastern Conf. Finals, game six: one long aspirin commercial. 
Can we get Bayer as a sponsor next time these teams play?  And for the NBA
Finals, it would only be fair to let Detroit and Indiana combine teams to play
LA.  The Wallaces, Jermaine O’Neal, Rip H., Reggie Miller, Tay-tay Prince,
Artest, Billups. That’d be even.

Sampled Dinosaur Barbeque (Willow & Franklin) here in Syracuse tonight.  ‘Twas a
recommendation, so we stopped in for dinner.  Ended up sitting outside;
missed some of the blues atmosphere and moto-decor on the inside (although the
music was piped al aire libre).  Picked up on a Harley-Davidson theme, but
didn’t sort out the connection beyond (coincidental?) clues.  The cornbread
grubbing sparrows were something new.  Decent barbecue, I’d say, but the
sauce was more of a salsa barbecue than the spiced smokehouse stuff we get in KC
at spots like Gates.  Not used to seeing vegetables (bits of onion and
green pepper?) in the sauce.   A generous smattering of Now-and-Laters
and Pistons basketball for dessert.  Is this the worst (perhaps baddest)
travelogue ever?  (That’s okay.  It’s a restaurant review. And a
Pistons fanzine.  And an aspirin commercial.)

Saturday morning was unusual; it was the first Saturday morning without a
basketball practice since late October.  To fill the time, we made a family
outing to midtown KC, picked up a few things at Wild Oats, an organic grocer,
then headed over to Waldo on a whim.  See, we got a certificate for a
Persian rug from A.–a good friend who runs a gallery in south-central Kansas
City, just beyond the Plaza and the campus of UMKC.  We don’t get over
there often; in fact, we hadn’t been in at least a year.  Originally from
Persia, just before it switched to Iran in ’35, A., now 80-something, gifted us
a generous certificate for a 3×5 carpet from his shop; we’ve put off the visit
for the past seven months because of the chaos of our incongruent
schedules.  

A life-long chemist by trade, A. wasn’t at the shop.  His son-in-law,
J., was filling in.  He called A. on the phone, handed it off to me. 
A. and I visited for a few minutes, much like we used to, back when I was an
undergraduate ghostwriting monthly letters to antique dealers on his
behalf.  We met because he and his late wife, P., were alums of my alma
mater; I was the recipient of the first award named for his wife, the first
recipient after her passing.  And I thanked him with a letter.  He
invited me to lunch at the Kabob House, and so on.  Over the phone, A. said
he was disappointed to miss us Saturday, but he hoped we would return this week
to have lunch with him.  He was giving a talk on chemistry to a group of
boy scouts in the afternoon.  Couldn’t be at the gallery Saturday for that
reason.

Continue reading →

A new local grocery store celebrated its grand opening earlier this
week.  Today was my turn for getting the food that will fuel our upcoming
week, so after Ph.’s scrimmage (is there such a problem as basketball poison?
My hoops toxicity level is at an all time high!), he and I popped in at the
glitzy Price Chopper to see what all of the hooha was about.  It’s Spring
Break–what do I need more than beer and Ruffles? And beef jerky for snacks
between high-carb meals?  I spend more money when I shop a store for the first
time.  I went in today knowing that I would pick up a few extra
things.  It comes down to new ways of seeing products, I think.  Or
maybe it results from new products.  I’m a ritual grocery shopper. Aisle by
tedious aisle, I usually stroll through Bressette’s Sun Fresh every other Sunday
picking out the bare essentials for meals.  But in a new store, like the
one we shopped today, I discover unforeseeable combinations.  Like at the
deli counter for example, I picked up a pound of chicken barbeque for sandwiches
tonight, since the Sunday evening meal is the start of the new weekly cycle.  Barbeque, brussels sprouts and various pickled garnishes–cukes and
beets.  Why not?

The store: like all new stores, it was a spectacle of consumptive
splendor.  High shelves, bright lights, and none of the dusty, uncirculated
products nobody ever buys–such as blue corn chips or ham and bean box
meals.  Surprising sight:  two men wheeling laptop carts with corded
scanner wands through the aisles–different aisles–to record the inventory and
inform the backroom about barren shelves.  When I worked in a grocery, we
actually pulled all of the back stock onto the floor during the night,
force-shelved as much as would fit, then carted it all back.  Night after
night.  That was twelve years ago.

When we approached the check-out, I saw three familiar students scanning
groceries.  I chose lane nine where B., a student from Nairobi who I got to
know last semester, was pushing clientele and their products through the
line.  I met B. in a class called Reading and Culture for International
Students.  And now, today, in our new local Price Chopper, I felt my
teaching shrink momentarily.  Although it was bent on critical reading and
cultural critique, something about the experience of reading American culture
through the checkout line, through the products and purchasing habits of the
upwardly affluent and economically safe (right, why was I shopping there?),
well, it seemed unusually powerful, unusually telling. 

It’s not a bad store, as stores go.  Unlike others places where I tried them once and
never went back, the Price Chopper up the street has potential to attract my
bi-weekly stroll-grab.  Heck, they even have Vernors (Michigan native
ginger ale; I had it every time I was sick as a kid–every time). 

[Clash Combat Rock]

Home for a late lunch yesterday, a gobbled Ethiopian fingerplate waiting to
be eaten since the weekend, injera and spicy, saucy globstuff. The President’s
dentals were on CNN, pearl rows pocked with 1973 repairs. Proof,
X-rayed evidence of military service in the Alabama National Guard. This
turned me, while mash-wrapping the fabulous red-lentil heap, to the Wonka
candy I tangled with the night before, late Wednesday: Nerd Ropes. What
story will dental records tell of this in 31 years? I ate two of them with
a bottle of water–tacky cherry syrup ropes roll-coated in assorted Nerds.
It was late; I needed a kick. If they’d had these at the Palatine Hill,
what?

Took the yarn quiz via Quizilla via
Culture Cat. Would’ve preferred
Mohair, but as it turned out, the test told me

You are Dishcloth Cotton.
You are a very hard worker, most at home when
you’re at home. You are thrifty and seemingly
born to clean. You are considered to be a Plain
Jane, but you are too practical to notice.
What kind of yarn are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Cleaning? Yeah, I’ll get on that right away.

Via Slashdot,
I looked at this article about open
source insecurity. So I’m wondering about trust in technology, about good
faith in the machine, and about the transference of this way of thinking about
open source as a "fertile ground for foul play" into
non-software-writing sectors, such as education. Why should we prefer
costly, closed-source course management systems to open source
alternatives? Foul play? Well, maybe. Here is where I get by
thinking while writing rather than planning all of this out ahead of
time. It’s just that closed-source systems seem much more likely to suffer
harm-intended hacks.

Narrow window for a brief entry this evening, since sloppy joes are
already started in the other room and, well, an unmonitored stove…blog…unmonitored stove…blog. You see the dilemma. Plus, we’ve scored free tickets to tonight’s KC Knights-Long Beach ABA game. It’s a one-two matchup, but I admit to being basketballed out, and the kids have practice in the morning again. But Phillip’s forever enthusiastic, so we’ll wear smiles tonight and root for the home team. Of course, I was looking forward to seeing Rodman-in-full-madness play one last time, but my friend O. from Detroit (who went to high school with a player on the Long Beach team) told me today that the Worm didn’t make the trip. Bummer!

Been thinking about two essay projects. Got an email about the upcoming
publication for the Greater Kansas City Writing Project inquiring whether anyone
on the listserv was currently publishing student writing on the Internet.
I replied, saying, “Yes. We have a blog. It’s rather like publishing on the Internet.” Then came the invitation to write about it before next Wednesday. Should be no problem as long as we get walloped with snow on Sunday and Monday. I really like the carefree pace of snowbound days, and we don’t get many around here. Usually grey skies and ice storms.

So that’s one project: an essay explaining why weblogs in education. Not trying to reinvent the wheel here, but I want to articulate a model of use that dispels the free-for-all mythos of unmediated e-comm while acknowledging the great boon of audience engagement and frequent, visible writing. It’s mainly for K-12 teachers who’ve not ventured far into the craggy terrain of weblogs in ed.

The other essay project (I will not burn the joes!) is for my students, mainly. I need to come up with a way of describing how we might read blogs rhetorically, how we might apply a close reading, seek answers to questions about how blogs connect with rhetorical terms of art. Right…the stove.