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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) palegreyminion | |
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April 5, 1990 to December 7, 2009.     I couldn't decide which one picture was my favorite. Nor can I succinctly phrase everything he was to me. He was my favorite partner, and the biggest pain in the ass you could imagine. He had a LOT of friends, and was more famous than me. He's leaving a damn big hole in the world. I'd say he was leaving some big shoes to fill but really, he had the tiniest, crappiest feet for a horse his size. I'd say he had the biggest heart, but he could be such a jerk too. Mostly he just had the biggest personality you could fit in a horse that size and he was a pretty big horse. Please, if you have a memory of him that stands out to you, do share it in the comments. Even if it's not flattering. Believe me, some of the most prominent memories I have of him are of him embarrassing me in front of a thousand people, or freaking out at cows, or some such thing. Along with the memories of that double-sword jump, or the years that we won nearly every tournament we entered, or the crazy bushwhacking trail rides we used to drag people on. Or the way that he could calm my soul and lift my mood. Or the fact that he had the worlds most pathetic buck, no matter how pissed off he was. He always kept me on my toes, and occasionally kept him on my toes as well (ow). I trusted him with my life, and he trusted me with his. In the end he died in his own pasture, with me at his head, and I can't imagine it having ended any other way. Though I did imagine it would be several years from now. There is an album of highlights of his life with me, from the time I first got him until this summer, at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=41476&id=1455999391&l=0265edbfed
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ladysprite | |
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So I was talking with a friend a little while ago, and the conversation came around, through a particularly indirect but interesting path, to first crushes, and celebrity crushes. It was amusing and entertaining at the time, but it left me thinking - in particular, thinking about the fact that I couldn't remember my first celebrity crush. Oh, there are plenty of movie stars and public figures that I've been sweet on over time, but I honestly can't remember being in junior high or early high school and swooning over any particular star. Partly this is because I didn't start crushing and falling in love until.... disturbingly, well after I started dating. I had my first boyfriend when I was 14, but that was mostly because I thought he was an okay guy, and when he asked me on a date I figured that saying yes was the right thing to do. We were teenagers, we were supposed to go on dates and make out and stuff, right? And after that, most of the guys I dated in high school I just went out with because I was afraid if I didn't they wouldn't be my friends anymore. It wasn't until just before college that I started actually being romantically interested in the people I got involved with. More than that, though, I realized that I *had* had crushes, at least once I started actually noticing the opposite sex as anything other than a source of car, pizza, movie tickets, and a weekly AD&D game that all might go away if I didn't let them kiss me. They were just all on fictional characters. Not movie stars or musicians or anything like that; not even TV characters - most of my daydreaming was directed at figures from my favorite novels (though I have to admit that, while he wasn't a book character, Nightcrawler *did* feature pretty high on the list). Even today, I'm more likely to swoon over a particular character than the actor playing them. I have no idea whether this Means Anything, about my weirdness versus mainstream-ness, or my media focus being more on the written word versus visual entertainment, or, well, anything. But it's kind of amusing and interesting to think about on a quiet day at work, if nothing else. And it does make me curious about my friends. So, fess up - first crush? Classmate, celebrity, fictional figure, other? Tags: introspection
Current Mood:  curious
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ladysprite | |
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"The Hamburger Cookbook," Ethel Mayer This is a little, cheap-looking, ancient paperback that I got for 50 cents at Buck A Book. I'm pretty sure I got it while I was in grad school, mostly because in Ohio ground beef is cheaper than water, so it was a staple of my diet. That said, I never actually used this book. For all that it was almost free, the layout (tiny print on cheap paper with no pictures, no spacing, and almost no organization) is kind of offputting, and the recipes themselves are kind of sad. Plus, they almost all call for MSG. Finding a recipe from here to use was a little difficult and unpleasant at first, until I found the section devoted to... just hamburgers. I felt a little like this was cheating, at first, until I looked a little further and found the recipes for out-of-the-ordinary garnishes. We decided that this was creative enough to be a valid recipe, and wound up trying their Good Basic Hamburger, with a garnish of mayonnaise, lemon juice, and crushed capers. Much to my pleasure (and, slightly, surprise), it was good. The burger recipe included a little bit of grated onion, which added a lot of flavor and moisture, and the mayo and capers complemented the flavor really nicely. It's rare that I eat plain hamburgers without cheese, but this was good enough by itself. I'll do it again. You should try it, too. "One Pot Recipes," Taste of Home Books This is a booklet that I got free one year when I renewed my Taste of Home subscription. It's only questionably a book, but I figure I owe it to this project to err on the side of caution - if something *might* be a cookbook, it ought to get used. I don't think I've ever used this one; I just got it and shelved it. I have too many casserole and one-pot oriented cookbooks as it is. On the other hand, when I finally did get around to looking through it, there were at least a handful of recipes that looked like they were worth trying. We wound up making Sausage Bean Stew, mostly because it called for both a bunch of ingredients that we already had (smoked sausage, black beans, kidney beans, carrots and celery) and a couple that we figured we ought to try cooking with more often (lentils, barley). And it was another success. Tasty, filling, easy, and probably a good winter staple - I'm running into a bunch of those at this point in the project. And now we have barley and lentils in the house for future use. "The Best Milk Recipes In America," Milk Processors This is even more questionably a cookbook - another glossy booklet, that I got free when I bought a gallon of milk at one point. I do remember actually having looked through it, and thinking that a couple of the recipes looked interesting, but never getting around to trying any of them. On review this time, I ran into the same problem. There were a whole handful of decent-looking recipes, for everything from main dishes to custards and smoothies. Finally, though, I decided to make Red Pepper Soup with Shrimp. Whole Foods had shrimp on sale, it looked delicious, and I've made red pepper soups in the past that I loved. Alas, this was not one of them. The texture was purely atrocious, in spite of being blendered half to death. I fixed that by passing it through a fine strainer, but that still didn't fix the fact that it was terminally bland, and the flavors of the peppers and the shrimp never came together into anything that worked. It wasn't quite an utter disaster; it was edible. But I have absolutely no need to ever try this again. I hope that the other recipes in here are better, but I'm a little hesitant to try them, since this one was listed as a first-prize winner. Win some, lose some.... Tags: cookbook project, food
Current Mood:  okay
Current Music: 'Googolplex,' Jack Pearson
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bluegargantua | |
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Hi, In quick succession, I have also finished reading Mostly True by Bill Daniel. Mostly True is done in this faux magazine style and is dedicated to hobo graffiti. It's...well, you've got to have an interest in hobos or graffiti or railroads or all of it to enjoy it. Since I do, this was a fun read for me. It's loaded with photos and interviews and art. Most of it is drawn from the author's documentary film about hobo graffiti called Who is Bozo Texino? the Secret History of Hobo Graffiti. Bozo figures prominently in Mostly True as well and shows an interesting evolution. The original Texino (a rough sketch of a man wearing a large cowboy hat with a star on it and smoking a long-stemmed pipe) was originally done up by a railroad worker named J. H. McKinley. After marking boxcars with his trademark signature for many years, another young man was inspired and took up the marking, eventually altering it to a slimmed down form that could be drawn faster. According to the records he kept, this new artist (referred to only as "Grandpa" in the book) has put his version of the Bozo mark on both sides of some 350,000 cars. The book also contains interviews with the artist of "Herbie" (a man in a sombrero sleeping beneath a tall tree) and the "Colossus of Roads" (another pipe smoking cowboy). Along with a smattering of other interviews and pieces. There's no coherent narrative thread, but it's more something to browse through. Again, of interest only if the subject matter really fires you up, but well worth it if you are. later Tom Tags: book review
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