Only one more hour!

Only one more hour!

New Year's Eve

Which, of course, means that this terrible horrible year is nearly over.

I have my AAS slides nearly done, and I can easily get my KITP slides done next week, since I should have a good amount of time in the evenings.

I still don't know who's driving me to the airport on Sunday, or who will be looking after my apartment. That's a bit of a concern.

I have an interview lined up for AAS, and it's for a job that I'm fairly interested in, because it'll be doing similar things to what I've done in the past. Hopefully that means I'll have a job this year.


I think the main problem with all this, is that within a week, I'll be out of Lansing for the longest period of time in eleven years. Beyond that, I'll probably have moved out of town by summer. This drastic change is causing a low lying level of dread that I expect will just grow as it gets closer.

We'll just have to see what the New Year brings.

WTF? One Week?

In one week, I'll be in Long Beach, and will have attended the pre-conference banquet.

For some reason, that's terrifying. Maybe it's the fact that next Tuesday, I'll be giving a talk in front of a hostile audience about how maybe all of them need to go back to photometry school and learn how to do it (also, a good background in math and statistics wouldn't be a bad thing, if they're in the mood for suggestions).

And a week from then, I'll have to give a talk about all my research to a group of people who will actually know if I'm bullshitting them. That's not fun either. I'm confident that I've done things correctly, but I don't think I give super great talks.

Oh well. New Year's, Airports, Hotels, then Talks (and more Airports, Hotels, Rental Housing, Public Transits, Conferences, Talks, Conferences, and then Bizarro Workshop thingies). Let's all celebrate when we get to Valentine's day. Maybe I'll even go out by myself and celebrate not dying through all this. Hey, if I'm lucky, I'll have a job by then.

Working at dinner

Nom nom nom.

The pizza was good, as were the boneless hot wings, I got a lot done, and everything went well.

Except for the stupid ice that formed on the inside of my windshield.

DIAF, ice that formed on the inside of my windshield.

Death is a futon

I received notice yesterday that someone in Japan is now following me on twitter. I decide to back-follow, or return-follow, or whatever the word is, after seeing that they seem to be astronomy related. Plus, cute bunny sketch.

The problem of course, is that I don't read or write Japanese. So when I saw a tweet today that was in Japanese, I went to google to get a translation. This reminded me of playing Translation Tennis, something we used to do way back in undergrad. One of the people I knew at the time wrote a perl script to automate the process with AltaVista. Google makes it easy with a convenient "swap languages" feature. The result:

Initial post: 寒っ。布団から出ると死ぬ
Translation: Going cold. Die and get out of the futon

Tennis results:

• 寒っ。布団から出ると死ぬ
• Going cold. Die and get out of the futon
• 風邪だ。死ぬと、布団から抜け出す
• is cold. And die, get out of bedding
• 寒いです。そして、布団から抜け出す死ぬ
• It's cold. The escape from death futon
• 寒いね。死布団からの脱出
• It's cold. Escape from death futon
• 寒いね。布団から脱出死
• It's cold. Escape death from the futon
• 寒いね。布団からの脱出死
• It's cold. Death out of the futon
• 寒いね。死には、布団の
• It's cold. Death is the futon
• 寒いね。死は、布団です
• It's cold. Death is a futon
• 寒いね。死布団です
• It's cold. Death is a futon

And it's over. Still, nine iterations before convergence isn't bad. Plus: "Death is a futon." That's great.

Summary and recap

I guess I've drunk all my cognac, so I have to go with the backup of Laphroig.

Thinking back, this is probably the best Christmas I've had since 2005. I fucked up 2006 pretty badly, and 2007 was just a disappointment of parents and depression. If I can get a job this year, then I'm pretty sure that Christmas 2009 will be even better. :)

My cooking was good, and I'm pretty happy with all that. Having good food on Christmas is about the most important thing, I think, after maybe having friends and loved ones around. I guess I'll take what I can get.

We're a week off from New Year's. Hopefully 2009 will be better than 2008 was.

乾杯!

Dessert

It's gooey.

Puff Pastry with chocolate ganache and sliced half-macerated strawberries. Drink: Vodka and cranberry juice.

I think I needed to precook the strawberries to pull out some of the liquid. Alternatively, I could have cooked it longer at a lower temperature. There's just too much liquid, and it's kept the pastry from puffing the way it wanted to.

The taste is good, but it's a bit of a disappointment after the rest of the meal.

Second course

I sent this picture to Julie, and she hates me now. :)

Beef Wellington a la Gordon Ramsey. The rest of that shit didn't get eaten, because it's like eating cardboard next to the wellington. There's garlic/thyme mash potatoes and green been casserole with some tasty american cheddar. Didn't matter.
I paired it with the "Montgomery Cheddar" from Zingerman's, which Cheese Girl assured me was their best cheddar. It was very good, and gave a nice complement to the Wellington. The drink pair was a Jeffrey Rowland (vodka and bourbon over ice).

It's good that I had that salad before, otherwise I'd have just eaten more Wellington.

Holy crap That's a lot of wellington

It was only a 1.5lb roast, but since it's the loin, there's no waste. It's all good. I think if I slice, and individually wrap the slices, that'll work best. This is definitely a ~6+ person recipe.

Edit after slicing: Including the one I ate, I have 5 inch+ish slices, plus two end bits that just have the duxelle/prosciutto wrap. So yeah, cutting it reasonably would give you 6 servings.

So:
$16 Chateaubriand
$5 Puff Pastry
$3 Mushrooms
$7 Prosciutto
~$2 Mustard
-------------------------------------------
$33 / 6 person Wellington = $5.50 per person.

At that price, how can you not make this everyday? That's cheaper than eating McDonalds. Sure, there's a lot of work involved, but still. CHEAPER than FUCKING McDONALDS!

First course

Cross section of heart of romaine with walnuts and balsamic vinaigrette. Decorated with slivers of Comte cheese.

Drink pairing: Martini.

Very good. If I make it again, I'll slice the romaine one more time, and balance the top on the bottom with the Comte in the middle. The pieces of lettuce were a bit large and hard to eat.

I Believe in Father Christmas

They said there'll be snow at Christmas.
They said there'll be peace on earth
But instead it just kept on raining
A veil of tears for the virgin birth.
I remember one Christmas morning
A winter's light and a distant choir
And the peal of a bell and that Christmas tree smell
And their eyes full of tinsel and fire.

They sold me a dream of Christmas
They sold me a silent night,
And they told me a fairy story
Till I believed in the Israelite.
And I believed in father Christmas,
And I looked at the sky with excited eyes,
Till I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn,
And I saw him and through his disguise.

I wish you a hopeful Christmas.
I wish you a brave New Year.
All anguish, pain, and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear.
They said there'll be snow at Christmas
They said there'll be peace on earth.
Hallelujah noel be it heaven or hell
The Christmas we get we deserve.

Christmas lights

Driving around past fancy houses.


Today was not very "worky," but was quite a bit of fun. Julie and Colby stopped by ostensibly to grab Omi for a late lunch. It quickly degenerated to a full fledged all day thing, with a trip to the bank for them, the comic book store for me, and then back to my apartment to burn a linux install disk for Julie's new computer. Once that was done, there were thoughts of more food, which led to dinner at Old Chicago.

This wasn't my original plan for the day (which included taking out the trash and vacuuming and generally picking up my apartment), but was certainly more fun. After dinner, I took a drive around the various subdivisions where the faculty live to look at Christmas lights. This year is probably the worst I've seen in a long time, probably due to the general economic malaise. Still, it's nice to see that the crazy people in the house above are still decorating (here's what it looked like two years ago).

Hiding in my apartment until the holidays are over

The downside of living right next to the mall is that the traffic this time of year is hard to deal with. I ran effectively all my remaining errands today. I picked up the last few things I need from the office to work from home, got lots and lots of groceries, and even went out to pick up a scarf (the downside of losing like a foot of hair is that you get cold a lot easier).

I'm slowly zeroing in on a final Christmas menu. The Wellington looks easy enough (Goodrich's had no foie gras, so I'm going with prociutto). I've made garlic mash and green bean casserole enough times I could probably do them in my sleep. I'm thinking I'll do a salad (I picked up some romaine today) as well, just because GBC doesn't seem like a veggie to me.

Dessert will be an assortment, as I plan on making magic cookie bars, rum balls, and spiced nuts tomorrow or wednesday. I also got some fruit (including "holy crap $6?" strawberries. They look good, and have a nice smell, so it'll be worth it), so I might use leftover puff paste to make some sort of tarts.

I did forget to grab cream while I was out, so I'll have to pick up some soon to make sure the mash tastes right.

And I have no idea why, but I'm pretty jazzed about this scarf. It seems snuggly and warm.

Zingerman's

Went to Zingerman's today with Julie and Colby. It was as delicious as ever, and I totally made a pig of myself with sandwich (the pastrami and corned beef combo one), knish (fried in oil that was clearly not hot enough, as it was greasy and not cooked correctly), mac and cheese (om nom nom nom nom nom nom), pop (cane sugar black cherry since their fountain was broken), and gelato (gianduia + dulce de leche, all words that blogger thinks I've spelled wrong). It makes me wish I could convince myself to drive to Ann Arbor by myself to eat this tasty stuff.

I also picked up mustard (the fancy Violette stuff), pastrami (the fatty kind, because duh), and some cheese (comte and cheddar) to cover what I need for christmas dinner.


My current menu plan for that includes:

• Beef Wellington (using the Gordon Ramsey recipe, I'm thinking)
• Mashed Potatoes (with garlic of course)
• Green Bean Casserole?
• Some Rolls? (although Julie still has my baking book, and I think I might have given it to her as a gift Friday night while drunk off my ass)
• Some sort of Baked Apple Dessert Thing.
• Possibly a Spinach Salad, because it Sounds Good.
• Corn Chowder? I kind of want to make a soup or something.

The cheddar was important, as I want something to snack on with the Wellington, and a proper English cheddar seemed most appropriate (Stilton would probably be better, but I hate Stilton). The mustard fills the place in Ramsey's recipe, although it's totally a French mustard. Sorry, Gordon. Take this as me rebelling against you being such a total prick on all your television shows. I'm also thinking I'm going to replace the prosciutto with foie gras, depending on it's availability at Goodrich's.

All in all, I expect it will be an enjoyable Solstice/Saturnalia/Mithras-tide/Sol Invictus/Christmas, if not due to food, then definitely due to drink.

Wedding

Not mine, of course.

Julie was beautiful in her dress, Colby was calm and confident, and it all went well. Assuming you're willing to overlook the foot of snow that dumped itself all around the state. I stayed in the area instead of driving home, so I didn't get back until today.

I'm glad for them, because they work so well together. Congratulations, Julie and Colby. You have many years of happiness ahead of you.

It was snowy today

I took a short walk around campus after doing some shopping on Grand River. Since I'll be spending six months in California during the best part of winter, I wanted to make sure I got the most out of the winter I have.

I clearly didn't put enough effort into my halloween costume

Some people are dumb

party woo!

Although in hindsight, it wasn't so much a party, as me joining people who still follow semesters, and used that break as a reason for drinking. I brought good gin (Beefeater), because I was concerned that there'd only be beer and bad liquor (so I'm an alcohol snob, whatever).

Basically a fun time, and it's moderately disconcerting to notice how much lower other people's tolerances are. It's sad, really.

Where i work