The RedMolly Picayune-Democrat

Sexual wakey-wakey: a non-soup post

So I just downloaded a bunch of Bee Gees tunes, all of which can be found on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. And it just occurred to me, as I was looking at the album cover, that the first time I can remember having those tingly ladyparts feelings is when I was probably six or seven, looking at John Travolta on that selfsame album cover.

How about you? Were you precocious? Delayed? Just right? And was your "awakening" (ahem) related to someone in real life, in the media, otherwise?

PS: in case you're wondering, John Travolta hasn't really done it for me since, oh, Saturday Night Fever or so. Well, except for Pulp Fiction.

How Molly got her groove back

I'm speaking of it in the past tense, but I'm actually waiting for it to happen.

How can a nominally self-employed, gig-hungry critter like myself spend so much time sitting at her computer and so little of it actually accomplishing anything?

Today I'm having a fun adventure called "Fighting with the Content Management System." I'm a writer, dammit, not a CMSer... and my creaky old HTML skills are showing their age & infirmity.

In happier news, I got an $800 check from CK Media this week. Yay! Three and three-quarters* more of those and we will be GOL.DEN.

And in other happy news, Jim and I have a "date" this evening; we're going to a creative professionals networking event downtown. Free hors d'oeuvres and cheap wine for all, huzzah! I was really hoping to have some sort of functional web site URL and/or business card-like substance to pass out at this meeting, but no such luck. I have frittered away far too much of my time and it's just not happening.

Also: BrickFest was awesome. Hundreds of adult Lego fans get together for a weekend, build build build, then open up the Convention Center to display their creations to an adoring public. We liked. (All photos by James Newman.)

 

Look, it's Lego Portland!

Back up and take a look to figure out this mosaic...

A street scene

These modernist apartment buildings were like the coolest Lego constructions ever...

...except for maybe this suspension bridge (complete with river & boats underneath)...

...or this pool hall. (Jim has been inspired to create a Lego version of Billy Ray's Neighborhood Dive. AWESOME.)

An epic battle!

More Lego carnage around the Lego Tree of Life; also, Lego crops in Lego fields.

"Have fun storming the castle!"

This Lego roller coaster apparently really worked, though I didn't see it in action.

Lego massage chair

Lego heavy weaponry, incongruously touted by a small headbanded child.

Now we're looking forward to BrickCon in Seattle this October. With a vengeance!

*disclaimer: this may or may not actually be correct. math is hard.

Not dead yet

...not quite, anyway.

I got a line of dialogue stuck in my head during my shower the other evening. Got out, toweled off, tucked myself into bed and the line was still there.* All I could do was grab a notebook and write it down.

Then that led to another line. And another. And a couple sparse notes of description. And the next thing I knew, I had the first scene of a comic book script, and it occurred to me:

I haven't done any writing for which I'm not getting paid** in a long, long time. That means nothing creative, nothing unusual, nothing non-mercenary. Including this blog. And perhaps my life might be slightly the poorer for it.

So... yeah, spammers be damned! I have deleted your ridiculous weight loss/sex aid comments and am returning to the fray, standard held high, eyes a-blazing! Huzzah, or something!

* In case you want to know, it's "Not much left here. A bone; a bone; a paring. Let's be gone."

** Except for my work for CK Media, for which I'm supposed to be getting paid but from which I haven't seen a check since December. Ha ha! Giant stumbling corporation failing to pay its reliable freelance drone; it is to laugh!

New year, new things, 701

Happy 2009, people!

New things are afoot, including, quite possibly, a cooking/huswifery blog. If you would like to be involved as a co-/guest author or have a site you'd like me to add to that blogroll, please LMK soonest. OK, not soonest. I won't be doing anything with it 'til week after next, probz.

Another new thing: hostessing (w/the mostessing, it is to be hoped) the Portland Youth Spelling Bee. Coming a week from this Saturday (that's January 10, for the calendar-impaired among us) to Mississippi Pizza Pub. Grab yer sprogs and head on down! 1-3 p.m., words, prizes, sound effects, etc., etc.

Yet another new thing: writing trivia questions for Pub Quiz Oregon (shortly to be Pub Quiz USA). At last, an opportunity arises to turn my massive store of useless knowledge to some profit (probably the only such chance I'll ever get, barring a call from Jeopardy!).

And another new thing: goodbye Firefox, hello Chrome. The new Firefox ran so slowly and unreliably for me that I have decided to take on the learning curve of a brand-new Web browser. At this point I think I qualify as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google.

And about the 701... the last post was #700 and I didn't even notice. Marvel at those peerless observational skills!

Conversation

Jim: "You haven't posted anything since December tenth!"
Me: "I haven't had anything to say."
Jim: "That's not true."
Me: (thinking) Oh, but it is.

Happy winter! We are celebrating by being buried under 8" of lovely fluffy white snow, capped with a nice chunky layer of ice. Whee! Pics to follow, mayhap.

Also: happy birthday, yesterday, to my beloved Herm; and happy birthday, five days ago, to my beloved Dad. Birthdays bustin' out all over!

Also also: I made a Thing with my Bind-it-All. And am looking forward to making more. Would love to post pics or a description, but the person or persons for whom this Thing is intended happens to read this blog...

Also also also: my beloved brother is in the hizzouse, and my parents are making the long and snowy and somewhat treacherous drive up from California today for proper Christmestivus celebrations. Cross fingers for them?

Thanksgiving: the aftermath

So you cook and you cook and you cook and you cook, and then you eat for like 15 minutes and 10 minutes of that is spent remonstrating with your children about their abysmal table manners (though, in their defense, Papa did say they could pick up the turkey legs and tear at them a la Renaissance Faire), and then you clean and you clean and you clean and you clean.

At least we had good company at Jason & Lucy's house, though. (That's Lucy with the stuffing leftovers up there.)

The turkey was fantastic this year, as it was last year. I think we've officially nailed it:

JIM NEWMAN'S GUARANTEED FOOLPROOF ROAST TURKEY
(AND MOLLY'S FLAVORFUL GRAVY)

You will need:

• a turkey (we're assuming here, for the sake of argument, that you are using a 12-pound bird, which serves 6-8 nicely and provides adequate leftovers)
• a large bucket or other receptacle, with a lid
• kosher salt
• brown sugar
• a generous pinch of whole cloves, and another of allspice berries
• water
• butter
• an onion
• some celery
• herb sprigs (rosemary is nice)--optional
• flour--probably about 3 Tbsp
• 1 cup white wine
• 1 cup chicken broth/stock/liquid
• 1 more Tbsp butter (because hey, it's a party!--but if you leave this out, it's not the end of the world)
• roasting pan, rack and whisk (I like the flat-bottomed spring sort, as shown up there on the right, because it lets you get into all the little fidgety corners of the pan)

The day before you plan to serve the turkey, make the brine: boil 1 gallon water, dissolve 2 cups kosher salt and 1 cup brown sugar in it. Cool to room temperature-ish. Place the turkey in the bucket/receptacle. (Make sure all giblets, necks and other miscellaneous bits of anatomy are removed BEFORE you do this.) Pour the brine over it; sprinkle in the cloves & allspice berries; add cold water until turkey is completely covered. Put lid on receptacle and refrigerate (or, if you live in the Great Frozenish Northwest as we do, you can find a cool spot outdoors to stick it... the temperature didn't go above 45 the whole time we were brining, so we figured it was safe). Leave until 3 hours before you want to eat.

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Remove turkey from brine; pat dry inside and out. Rub inside and out with softened butter. Peel and quarter the onion; cut the celery into largeish pieces; stuff vegetables and herbs into turkey cavity.

Place rack in roasting pan. Make obligatory joke about "nice rack." Place turkey on rack, breast side down. Put turkey in oven and roast, undisturbed, unbasted, for two hours.

Reduce oven heat to 350. Remove turkey from oven; perform complicated flipping maneuver, best handled by two chefs, that results in turkey resting on rack, breast side up. Make obligatory joke about "flipping the bird." Return to oven; roast for another 30 minutes.

Take turkey out of oven; remove rack and turkey from pan and place on carving board. Tent lightly with aluminum foil. Place roasting pan on stove so that it covers two burners. Set both burners to medium-low heat. Heat up turkey drippings slightly; fish out any large onion/celery chunks.

Sprinkle flour into roasting pan. Whisk madly until drippings and flour coalesce into a pleasing roux, flour loses its pale color and the whole thing starts to smell fabulous. Whisk in white wine and broth; cook, stirring constantly, until you have gravy. At this point, you can whisk in the last bit of butter, or you can just forget about it. The gravy will taste fine without it.

Pour gravy into a gravy boat (or, as we did, a fancy porcelain creamer), straining out the dark bits if you're fussy or leaving them in if you're not.

Carve turkey; serve with gravy.

Also: just because you're married to a photographer doesn't mean you're going to get any actual, you know, family Thanksgiving photos. Just saying.

If you don't have something nice to say...

...don't say anything. (Or, as I imagine my Grammy might have said, "Come sit next to me.")

Also, if all you're going to blog about is how you haven't been blogging... yeah, don't bother.

Anyway: I am still unemployed, increasingly frustrated & bitter, and also starting to swing wildly between grandiose hopes for future plans and utter despair at the thought of never earning another dime. Which is in & of itself inaccurate, since I did in fact score a gig as the moderator of the Portland Youth Spelling Bee, the junior version of our family's favorite Monday night pastime (which I finally! won again last night after a long freakin' dry spell... "T-O-R-O-I-D-A-L" FTW!). Spelling for kids! Coming to a pizza place near you in January, if you happen to live in Portland at least.

In happier news, we went for a walk at the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge a couple days ago and saw an honest-to-gosh bald eagle. No matter how many times you see one, it's always kinda cool (except for that one frightening Stephen Colbert segment about the hundreds of bald eagles congregated, seagull-like, on some weird woman's lawn in Alaska).

And finally, I have repackaged a couple of videos (and by couple, I do in fact mean "two") demonstrating different Photoshop/Photoshop Elements techniques & uploaded them to YouTube. I'm planning another one on skin-softening techniques and will let you know when that one's up too. If you have any requests for how to do a specific sort of retouching or photo editing, I would be delighted to see what I can do to fulfill them.

Obsessions old & new

Jim: having our friend Mike build him some frames so he can pull together a photo show (location TBD; anybody know a gallery owner?); his new basement photo studio (pics coming)

Fisher: the Pour le Merit medal (coming his way this Christmas... shhhhh); Rosetta Stone German

Rhys: making dinner all by himself (night before last); Elephant and Piggie; Mr. Putter & Tabby Pour the Tea

Me: the Persian Empire (don't ask); budget cookbooks (I love the More-With-Less Cookbook and just picked up Miserly Meals at the library)

The cats: eating all they can hold, and more, of Atta Cat, the new dirt-freakin-cheap cat food we've been buying (contrary to our expectations, they seem to prefer it to the marginally more middle-class Meow Mix)*

Isn't that the most majestic Photoshop work you've ever seen? What do you suppose that cat is looking at?

Also: interview tomorrow afternoon for the position of moderator of the Portland Junior Spelling Bee. Tell me that would not be the bestest job in the whole wide world.

* I have just learned, via the magic of the Google, that American Nutrition, makers of Atta Cat, also makes a bargain-priced dog food called "Maintain Chunks." Is there some sort of naming award for which I can nominate this product?

Nowell, Nowell

First things first: a very happy birthday to my belovedest brother! 28... man, that's getting up there.

Second things second: at the suggestion of my genius sister, the Schardt/Newman clan is going Handmade for the Holidays. Yep, break out the soy candle kits and the popsicle-stick looms... we're giving each other presents this year that are full of Love and Good Wishes, not so much of Expensiveness. Hooray!

I saw this blog carnival of holiday paper craft projects announced a couple of weeks back; in fact, before the death of the magazine, I was planning on working up a project to include in it. But best laid plans and tra la, and here we are looking at all the other cool projects that other people came up with. How awesome, for example, is this Pop-Up Doll House Scene?

Now if I could just get off my tuchus, and maybe finish up those art canvases I've been playing with intermittently (the ones to send to people who commented on the 3000 comments post), then I could get started on crafting some serious holiday cheer. Which would be a most welcome commodity around here.

And third things third: I had a job interview yesterday which went well enough that I'm having a second interview tomorrow. Cross your fingers hard and think of me at 3 p.m. Pacific time... I really really want this job and think I would do a swell, er, job of it.

Business endeavor 2.0.5.3

...or something... is up and running. Tell your friends.

(I am thinking that working on nice bright cheery holiday cards on these gray rainy days sounds quite pleasant, really.)