beautiful, not precious

Last night, I watched a segment on 60 Minutes about how finding gold is used to finance violence in Africa. It reminded me of how the diamond trade there has been historically used for the same thing.

Some years ago, I took a class to learn several graphics and desktop publishing programs; in my class was a woman who wore a very attractive ring on her finger. I asked her about it and she told me it was her wedding ring. But unlike the more typical band of gold with a diamond, hers looked distinctly of a Southwestern design. As I recall, she said the stone was turquoise and the band was a silver color.

Although certain metals and stones are considered to be 'precious,' in a material sense they're really whatever value humankind has placed upon them. Beauty and rarity may play big roles in their ascribed values, but we could just as well place value at a more personal level. If a band with turquoise signifies wedding vows, then that should be enough.

Niner victory

The 49ers won today. And it was a comfortable win where I wasn't sitting on the edge of my seat until the very end. It's nice to see everything coming together for a game, and I look forward to continued improvements. One nice thing to see is that the coaching staff is willing to make changes to give the team a better chance to win. After all, the most important stat of all is the win-loss record. It's exciting to think about what the future holds if the team continues to get better...

generation to generation

Today, family members met for lunch at a restaurant, including siblings, nieces, and nephews. The eldest of my nieces and nephews are young adults now, but I can't help but spend some of the time looking at all of them as the young children they once were. We have several of the framed mats that have cutouts filled with photos from when they were toddlers and little kids - it's wonderful to have the perspective of an older generation to see them in this way.

Remembering my nieces and nephews from when they were kids reminds me of the way my mother would look at me as I grew into an adult. It wasn't until I experienced it for myself that I began to understand her perspective. No matter how old I got, a part of her would always remember holding me as a baby, then watching me crawl and learning to walk, and so on, throughout the growing process. I can still hear her calling me her "handsome little boy."

I'm always missing her, but now particularly; she died three years ago today.

depth perception and hearing

I'm still learning the consequences of losing the hearing in my right ear from the brain surgery I had this past summer. I find myself comparing it to losing the sight of a single eye. The most obvious difference that would result from losing the sight in one eye (I imagine) would be losing depth perception.

The other day, I was standing outside my house when I heard a bird singing. Actually, it was the non-melodic sound that a male Anna's hummingbird makes. And unlike before, each time I turned my head, it seemed to be coming from a different direction. That is a difference that I've noticed since the surgery - it is more difficult to determine the direction that sounds are coming from. So it's not quite the depth perception of binocular vision; it's similar but is directional rather than depth-related.

Ironically enough though, the tinnitus I frequently experience now happens more often in my right ear.

no eggshells and rice

Here's today's domestic hint:

If you have a food disposal, one thing I learned from ours backing up (not too long ago) is that you have to be very careful and particular about what goes down it. And before I even get to that, the pipe that runs directly out from the disposal has a diameter that is much narrower than a regular sink pipe. Hence, it can get clogged up much faster.

In any case, a couple of food scraps that should never go through the food disposal are eggshells and rice. I figure that the residue of raw eggs adds a binding material to the ground-up shells, plus the starchy rice builds up over time. I don't really know just how it all works but now we hardly use the food disposal at all. The person who cleared the clog for us told me that his family doesn't even have a food disposal.

Hope this helps, and on that note...

Happy Thanksgiving!

too late to be taking notes

Here's another scene from high school - let me push the 'Play' button:

It wasn't my habit to go to the school library just before a test but this time I did. I don't recall for what class it was, but I saw another student from that class, Rufino, sitting at a table. So I went up to see what he was doing. He was writing class material down on a piece of paper as if he was taking notes. And my first thought was, "Isn't it a bit late to be doing that? What good is it going to do you now?" So I asked him what he was doing, and he told me that writing things down helps him remember them. And I thought, that makes sense... now why didn't I think of that?

what's pastry again?

Before watching cooking shows on TV, I thought I knew what pastry was: baked items usually eaten for breakfast such as bear claws or what you might find in an Entenmann's box at the grocery store. I can't even come up with a definition, but I'm pretty sure I know pastry when I see it. But I've been confused over what the cooking shows are calling pastry and particularly a pastry chef - apparently anyone that works with sweets and desserts is a pastry chef. Which also includes people that make sculptures out of sugar, chocolatiers, anything to do with sweets. And minimally anything to do with what I guess are then called... puff pastries?

So enough with the confusion; yet again I decided to consult with my dictionary (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition) and looked up the word pastry: sweet baked goods made of dough having a high fat content; darn it, that didn't help any... what's pastry again? What about the pastry competitions that encompass all kinds of sweets? Is pastry synonymous with dessert in general? Do chefs and the cooking world in general define pastry differently than the dictionary? Any thoughts?