Hush, Little Baby

The March 22 show of A Prairie Home Companion had a wonderful rendition of "Hush Little Baby" by Inga Swearingen (iTunes link). You'll need RealPlayer to listen. (You browser should walk you through the setup if you don't already have RealPlayer; be sure you just get the free player, and not the free trial of the pro player — Real is bad about coercing the upsell.)

I love the sound of it. Light, and just enough variation that the repetition stays interesting without losing the repetitive structure. It's hard to make an a cappella solo sound good, but she's done it.

Kitchen Laboratory

After the disappointing end to my attempt at cooking corned beef, I was left with a head of cabbage on my hands and no idea how to use it.  Fortunately the next day one of my co-workers brought a corned beef and cabbage salad to work.  It is actually a prize-winning recipe for the annual Napa Valley mustard festival.  I thought it delicious, so she gave me the recipe.  On Wednesday I got to try it out.  It turned out beautifully!  It calls for corned beef, raw cabbage, cooked green beans, boiled potatoes and a mustard vinaigrette.  I used ham instead of corned beef and it tasted wonderful.  There was one nebulous item in the vinaigrette ingredients: a certain type of chili.  The woman who gave me the recipe said she's never found it in any grocery store.  So it must some elite product.  The only problem is neither of us knew if it was chili powder, chili sauce, or just bottled chiles.  I used chili powder when making the vinaigrette.  Then I remembered some packets of chili sauce left over from a trip to Panda Express.  I opened one and poured it all over the salad I had on my plate.  It tasted wonderful and boy, did it add some kick!  After about five minutes I began trying everything I could think of to quench the burning in my mouth.  It was my own version of Mythbusters.  To my sadness I found that, while bread is excellent for absorbing the heat from Chinese mustard and horseradish--the heat that sears your sinuses--it has no effect on chiles, which tends to burn the mouth and throat.  Milk was the only thing that brought relief; but even that was only temporary.  The heat in my mouth and throat continued for some fifteen minutes after I finished dinner.  I guess I'll remember next time to go easy on the chili sauce.

That's it? I'm so disappointed…

I gave blood last weekend. After a little bit of confusion over the scheduling, I gave my usual double red.  If you're not familiar with the process, they hook you up to a machine that takes out a total of two pints of blood, extracts the red blood cells, and returns the rest of your blood (and some extra saline) into your body. The procedure takes place in three cycles, ten to fifteen minutes each.

On the third return, I started noticing some discomfort in my arm, around the needle.  I couldn't see my arm, since the nurse had applied a heating pad to improve my circulation.  (Apparently, I was bleeding slowly.)  My reaction was to apply pressure to it.  The nurse noticed, and came over to see what I was doing.  She checked under the heating pad, then shut the machine off and started to very quickly unhook me.  The needle had worked free from the vessel, and the returning blood was just going under the skin.  She used a term to describe what was happening, but I couldn't catch it for her accent.  (Ben?)

I had to wait an extra fifteen minutes afterwards (thirty instead of the normal fifteen) so they could apply another heating pad to my arm.  They told me it was nothing to worry about, but that I could expect a giant bruise to develop.

So what did I get?  Not much.  There were two areas, about the size of a golf ball total, that went straight to that faded yellow color.  No giant purple-red splotch.  Nothing to show off.  Hardly anything at all.

The coolest part, though, is that a gal from the blood bank just called to follow up.  How my arm?  How am I feeling, since I didn't get a considerable portion of my blood back?  She also wanted me to know that they were able to get at least one usable unit of red blood cells out of me, so it wasn't all for naught.

Jason Elam's Going to Atlanta

Sigh.

Spring

We are enjoying such a beautiful spring here this year.  For the past two or three years we haven't even had a springtime.  We have gone straight from winter to summer, with temperatures jumping from 40s or 50s one week to 90s the next.  It is wonderful to have the temperatures staying around the 60s.  The trees and bushes appreciate it too, and are blossoming and leaving out joyfully.  I love to stand on our balcony in the mornings and evenings to smell the fragrant air.  I'm so grateful we were blessed with a real spring this year.

I Thought We had Hoarfrost

I glanced down Stevens Creek Boulevard on my way to work this morning, and all the trees were puffy and white. Aparently the trees decided it was time to blossom.  They're fresh blossoms, too, because it had been raining (fairly heavily, by the look of the pavement), and the blossoms were still on the trees.

And if any of you are wondering why I was on Stevens Creek on my way to work, I wasn't lost.  I was stopping by Marie Callenders.  Happy Pi Day.

Now I Just Need a White Carnation…

We stopped into Nordstrom Rack today. They had a hot pink sport coat. The picture doesn't do it justice – it was hot pink, not salmon. I grabbed the shirt and tie and Nicole snapped a photo.

My apologies and thanks to Marty Robbins.