In my quest to expand from hamburgers and steak’ums four times a week, I am trying to discover what other meats Tom enjoys. Pork is one that is on shaky ground with him.
See, the problem with pork is that it is 100% better if you eat it with applesauce. Guess who doesn’t like applesauce. Me, I enjoy a good pork chop once in a while. Him. Well, not so much.
I have seen him eat pork loin, as well as Cordon Bleu and Wienerschnitzel* made with pork cutlet**. So I have been brave enough to make Wienerschnitzel once in a while, but not often, because you’re supposed to serve it with brown gravy and spaetzle***. Guess who doesn’t like spaetzle?
So, I happened across a pork loin recipe in the Kraft Magazine. It definitely had potential, but I had to make some allowances for our specific tastes. I’m going to post both the original, and my version of it. It was liked enough to make it into my recipe book.
One-Pan Roasted Pork Supper Original.
1 lb sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 large red onion cut into thin wedges
½ cup Light Catalina Reduced Fat Dressing
1 1/2 tsp dried thyme leaves, divided
1 pkg Stove Top Stuffing Mix for Chicken
1 ½ cup water
2 small pork tenderloins (1 ½ lb)
Preheat oven to 375*F. Toss sweet potatoes and onions with dressing and ½ tsp of thyme. Arrange in a 15x10x1 baking pan sprayed with cooking spray. Bake 10 minutes
Meanwhile, combine stuffing mix and water. Cut each tenderloin diagonally into thirds. Push vegetable mix to the edge of the pan. Spoon stuffing down the center of pan; top with meat. Sprinkle remaining tsp of thyme over meat
Bake at 45 to 50 minutes or until cooked through.
Jenn’s One-Pan Roasted Pork Supper.
1 lb yukon potatoes, cubed
1 large red onion cut into thin wedges
½ cup Italian Dressing
1 1/2 tsp dried thyme leaves, divided
1 pkg Stove Top Stuffing Mix for Chicken
1 ½ cup water
1 small pork tenderloin (1 lb)
Preheat oven to 375*F. Toss potatoes and onions with dressing and ½ tsp of thyme. Arrange in a 15x10x1 baking pan sprayed with cooking spray. Bake 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, combine stuffing mix and water. Cut each tenderloin diagonally into quarters or single serving sizes. Push vegetable mix to the edge of the pan. Spoon stuffing down the center of pan; top with meat. Sprinkle remaining tsp of thyme over meat
Bake an additional 45 to 50 minutes or until potatoes are cooked through**** and meat is 165*F internally.
Notes:
Don’t forget your green and yellow veggies! Broccoli and green beans go great with this. You don’t need another starch with the stuffing and the potatoes.
Remember your applesauce! Nothing goes with pork better than applesauce. Just dip and enjoy!
Bon appetite!
_________________
*Contrary to popular belief, Wienerschnitzel has nothing to do with wieners of any variety. Wiener is what something from Vienna is called. Wien is proper spelling of Vienna, therefore something at originates from Vienna is Wiener. Schnitzel is just a way of cooking, deep fried.
** Properly, Wienerschnitzel is made with veal, not pork. However, veal was and is expensive so a lot of our Germanic friends make it with pork. It’s just as good. Especially considering I don’t eat veal.
***Spaetzle are homemade noodles. They are good, but a bit of work. I guess I can post that recipe one day as well.
****Alright, look. I have a terrible time cooking potatoes. I don’t know why. I always managed to under-cook them. The pork was cooked, but the potatoes were slightly underdone. It’s an issue with me.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Monday, August 11, 2008
The Virginia Blogs: Passengers for Philadelphia International...
Have a seat. You're going to be here a good long while.
Yeah.
So, Tom was going to visit his mother this weeks. We were able to find a reasonably priced flight out of the local airport that should have gotten him there about 5:30.
HA.
We arrived at noon, in plenty of time to make the flight. Checked in, fixed the wonky boarding passes, and headed down the terminal. As we sat down to wait for him to head through security, we get travel alerts from Orbitz, telling us that the flight is being delayed. Well, that's not so bad, but we didn't hear it from the airline. Tom proceeded to the gate as though everything were going on time. I headed back home, with a little planned detour to the store.
I'm half way through the store, and the phone rings. Guess who. Guess what. The flight was cancelled. Cancelled. Grr arg.
Tom gets online and they get him on the next flight that leaves at 3:10. Well, he was told off the bat that they were running late. Okfine. He would still make the connecting flight. Okfine.
He gets on the plane, he gets off the plane. He gets on the plane, and they tell them that anyone who has a connecting flight before 8:30 has to debark the plane. The plane has lost use of it's radar and they were going to some rinky dink backwater (as if we should talk) airport to get a new one and there was no way they were going to be at Philly before then. Fantastic.
He calls me about 4:30 and tells me what's going on. They are going to rebook him, AGAIN, on another flight. I tell him to call me when he knows what's going on. So I wait. And wait. And Wait. And wait.
Finally about 6:15 he calls and tells me that he's still standing on line. I just about lose it on the phone and tell him I'll be there in 10 minutes. I drive like the dickens to the airport and find him online, and there's a very long line. He's near the front, so clearly my original plan of going on in there a b*tch on wheels wasn't going to work. I tried a different approach: I called the airline.
They hung up on me.
I called Orbitz.
They hung up on me.
I called them back.
They transferred me to the airline.
Who proceeded to hang up on me.
Honestly, I was ready to punch something. Finally, the jerk who had been at the counter for nearly an hour (according to the others in line and who were ready to snap his blackberry in half) got whatever the heck it was he wanted and went away. Then, the two Israeli gentlemen who missed their connecting flight to LaGuardia were up next. Then the woman with the aircast who would have taken a flight to Timbuktu to get out of the airport was up next. And finally Tom.
"We can get you on the 8:25."
You bet your ass you can get him on that flight. Because if you can't you're booking him on the 8:35 out of the other airport and I'm going drive his butt down there.
So, he gets the third set of boarding passes for the day. We walk back to the waiting area and Tom endulges in a soda and a pack of Nutter Butters. Oh yeah. Healthy diet. So we sit for a while and he decides that he has to go through security again and he should get going. This time, I am not leaving until the plane is off the ground.
He heads down the walkway, through security (he should have worn socks) out into the 10 gates they have there. I head over to rental car area where there are some chairs that you can sit in and watch the planes take off. I settle in and not 10 minutes later, I get a phone call from you-know-who, and … well go ahead. Guess.
That’s right, there’s a delay. Now they aren’t taking off until 9:45. I can’t sit there that long—I have to go to work the next morning. Reluctantly, I got out of the chair and headed for the car. Just about the time I got to the gate with the car, the phone rang again. I dreaded answering it.
This time, though, the news wasn’t bad. They were moving up the departure time to 8:45, and that they would be boarding soon. Apparently they were board in minutes after he hung up with me, because the plane was listed as departing at 8:33 p.m.
So, just 12 hours after he left our house, he finally landed in Binghamton.
He could have driven there, and been there four hours before.
Gah.
Yeah.
So, Tom was going to visit his mother this weeks. We were able to find a reasonably priced flight out of the local airport that should have gotten him there about 5:30.
HA.
We arrived at noon, in plenty of time to make the flight. Checked in, fixed the wonky boarding passes, and headed down the terminal. As we sat down to wait for him to head through security, we get travel alerts from Orbitz, telling us that the flight is being delayed. Well, that's not so bad, but we didn't hear it from the airline. Tom proceeded to the gate as though everything were going on time. I headed back home, with a little planned detour to the store.
I'm half way through the store, and the phone rings. Guess who. Guess what. The flight was cancelled. Cancelled. Grr arg.
Tom gets online and they get him on the next flight that leaves at 3:10. Well, he was told off the bat that they were running late. Okfine. He would still make the connecting flight. Okfine.
He gets on the plane, he gets off the plane. He gets on the plane, and they tell them that anyone who has a connecting flight before 8:30 has to debark the plane. The plane has lost use of it's radar and they were going to some rinky dink backwater (as if we should talk) airport to get a new one and there was no way they were going to be at Philly before then. Fantastic.
He calls me about 4:30 and tells me what's going on. They are going to rebook him, AGAIN, on another flight. I tell him to call me when he knows what's going on. So I wait. And wait. And Wait. And wait.
Finally about 6:15 he calls and tells me that he's still standing on line. I just about lose it on the phone and tell him I'll be there in 10 minutes. I drive like the dickens to the airport and find him online, and there's a very long line. He's near the front, so clearly my original plan of going on in there a b*tch on wheels wasn't going to work. I tried a different approach: I called the airline.
They hung up on me.
I called Orbitz.
They hung up on me.
I called them back.
They transferred me to the airline.
Who proceeded to hang up on me.
Honestly, I was ready to punch something. Finally, the jerk who had been at the counter for nearly an hour (according to the others in line and who were ready to snap his blackberry in half) got whatever the heck it was he wanted and went away. Then, the two Israeli gentlemen who missed their connecting flight to LaGuardia were up next. Then the woman with the aircast who would have taken a flight to Timbuktu to get out of the airport was up next. And finally Tom.
"We can get you on the 8:25."
You bet your ass you can get him on that flight. Because if you can't you're booking him on the 8:35 out of the other airport and I'm going drive his butt down there.
So, he gets the third set of boarding passes for the day. We walk back to the waiting area and Tom endulges in a soda and a pack of Nutter Butters. Oh yeah. Healthy diet. So we sit for a while and he decides that he has to go through security again and he should get going. This time, I am not leaving until the plane is off the ground.
He heads down the walkway, through security (he should have worn socks) out into the 10 gates they have there. I head over to rental car area where there are some chairs that you can sit in and watch the planes take off. I settle in and not 10 minutes later, I get a phone call from you-know-who, and … well go ahead. Guess.
That’s right, there’s a delay. Now they aren’t taking off until 9:45. I can’t sit there that long—I have to go to work the next morning. Reluctantly, I got out of the chair and headed for the car. Just about the time I got to the gate with the car, the phone rang again. I dreaded answering it.
This time, though, the news wasn’t bad. They were moving up the departure time to 8:45, and that they would be boarding soon. Apparently they were board in minutes after he hung up with me, because the plane was listed as departing at 8:33 p.m.
So, just 12 hours after he left our house, he finally landed in Binghamton.
He could have driven there, and been there four hours before.
Gah.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
The Virginia Blogs: Mmm. Bacon.
Tom was sadly disappointed to find out that there was no actual bacon involved in this adventure. He was very excited to hear that we were going to visit a place called Bacon’s Castle. Actually, come to think of it, both of us were slightly disappointed. Him for the lack of bacon, and me for the lack of castle.
Still it was an interesting little place. Bacon’s Castle is one of the three oldest standing brick buildings in the Northern Hemisphere. The other two are in the Caribbean, one of those is in Barbados.
It was a bit of disappointment driving up and not seeing a castle like we would think of castle, but a Jacobean/Greek revival house.
The house was actually built by a one Mister Arthur Allen, who apparently came from nothing and made his own fortunes. Allen’s house was HUGE for the time, being one half of the house you see above (the left half). But even today, the house is large for a middle class family home.
So, why if Mr. Allen built the house, is it called Bacon’s Castle? Because of Bacon’s Rebellion, of course!
Yeah, exactly. Bacon’s Rebellion? What the heck are you talking about? Bear with me as I attempt to explain a political uprising from 1676… Nathanial Bacon was a plantation owner who demanded an aggressive policy against the native Americans. However, Governor Berkeley didn’t want an aggressive policy against the Doeg, Susquehannock and Appomattox people. Well, Bacon didn’t give a damn. He went and kidnapped some of the Appomattox because he said they stole some corn. Berkeley didn’t like that, so he gave the Appomattox some guns and gun powder. Bacon didn’t like that, so he went and laid siege to the capital of… something. Richmond maybe? They fled to the Eastern Shore and on the way laid siege to Mr. Allen’s house.
Here’s the thing—they aren’t sure that Bacon ever even walked in the door of this place. Just that his buddies took over, and made it a fortified place to hide from the governor*.
And because it was fortified, it was therefore given the moniker of “castle”.
Bacon’s Castle is down a barely paved road that you get to by following a small country road. You go down the barely paved road and find a dirt road. At the end of this dirt road is the house. Oh, I might mention that there are tobacco fields everywhere.
This house has stood through the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, it’s changed hands dozens of times. There were wealthy owners, there were poor owners. The original house was a Jacobean style house. There are almost no examples of this in the US, whereas England… well they’ve got towns built like this.
The second part of the house was an addition in the late 1700/early 1800 and is called Greek Revival. If you take a look at it up there on the right, it’s more boxy, and there should actually be a large porch with columns, and you would really see it.
So we pulled up, and… we’re the only ones visiting at that moment. Private tour. Sweet. Well, it’s a partially empty house because they don’t have the right furniture to put it to accurately portray each period that the house occupied. One of the rooms however, they not only have furnished, but furnished to the time period, restored the windows, and have an original piece in the house.
In the master bedroom, where the masters of the house would have take breakfast every morning (so this room is LARGE) was the bed**, some pots, two tables, a dresser and a cradle. The cradle was apparently the property of Arthur Allen. So that cradle is original to the house. They were surprised to find it in the attic of the house when the AVPA bought the house in 1972. They also found a spinning wheel from the mid to late 1600s in the attic with it.
The attic was actually a grain storage bin when the house was originally built. It was eventually turned into a spinning room, wood storage and servant’s quarters. You could see the roofing nails through the roof, and I was a little surprised to see that they looked just exactly like the one that my parents had throughout their house*** when they were revamping it.
There were a few other room, but most of those were unremarkable because there was no furniture in them. We went down to the basement. Houses in this area (Hampton Roads) don’t have basement because of the extremely high water table and very rare chance of frost freeze down far enough to endanger the house. So the basement was a bit of novelty.
And the gentlemen who took the time to restore this house was amazing. He used as much of the original building as he could—which meant that he dove-tailed in pieces of new wood with the old stuff in the support beams! so that it was as authentic as possible. I had never seen this before and I was amazed at the dedication to authenticity that this man had in order to do something like that.
The basement was a summer kitchen, wood (then coal) storage and a wine cellar. The summer kitchen didn’t have windows. Well, there were windows, but they were holes to the outside. Small rodents and mammals could get in and out of the kitchen with ease. There were bars to keep the larger ones out****. It the winter, they used the kitchen as a smoke house and storage for winter goods.
So, then we were bought up to the Parlor. The house reigned over by a very strong woman for the later half of the 1800s (who name I cannot remember for the life of me) and during this time, she whipped the house back into shape. She decorated this parlor with the sense of the time***** and it was apparently a smashing room!
Well, here’s a little something you didn’t know about these wacky Victorians: it was all the rage to write in the glass of the windows. As you walk around the room, you see phrases and names and pictures in the glass. I just kept thinking how I would gotten my butt beat for even thinking of that. But they have a pane out of one of the windows that has an entire original letter written to one of the ladies who lived there who was being courted by a gentleman. It was neat.
We came across a window with some names on it, and I was shocked to see my maiden name on it! I had done some research years ago to see if I could find out more about our ancestry, and I was fairly unsuccessful+. However, I did come across a Captain in the Civil War (for the North who served in and around Richmond) who could have been related to us. Like I said, I was “unsuccessful” in my pursuits. Well, here was someone who either could be related to me or to this gentleman++ I had found in the research. It was really cool.
Outside this parlor you could see a warming wall and a garden. The garden was a restoration of the original kitchen garden that had been planted by Arthur Allen to supply his family with fresh herbs, spices and vegetables. It had been lost for years and years, and some historians weren’t even sure the stories of it were true. It was a garden that would have been helpful to both American and English historians, as most kitchen gardens from the 1600s are long gone, plowed under and built upon.
Well, the gentleman who did the restoration said that there had to be a garden out there because of the way the land was laid out. He sent a few workers out to poke around and low and behold, they found the original paths. It didn’t take long to uncover the whole garden and by the layout were able to recreate 4 or the original 8 garden squares. The warming wall was built at the back after the discovery to make more of a traditional English garden than a kitchen garden. There was a wedding setting up in the garden.
So, the last thing they have to display in this house is the midden heap findings. The garbage people. Art and architecture can tell you what people thought and appreciated, but garbage tells you the real story! Any archeologist who finds the community dump hits pay dirt. They had selections from the midden heap that included bottles of wine, pottery, real china (when china was from China) and some silver and copper. I won’t bore you with details, but suffice to say that if you were into archeology, it was most delightful.
We thanked the lady and walked back out the car. Tom looked back at the house as we climbed in. “Well, it’s a really nice, historic old house, but not nearly enough bacon.”
-----------------------------------
*At the time, Bacon was considered a hero, but within about 10 years, he was and still is considered a traitor. Want to learn more? Bacon’s Rebellion
**I’ll get into Renaissance, Jacobean, and Georgian beds when I get to the Jamestown Settlement blog.
***We’re inclined to believe their house was built around 1915 because we found newspaper from 1917 stuffed in places as insulation. Houses weren’t built in 6 months back then like they are today.
**** It always amazes me how people years ago were so non-plussed by animals and rodents and insects. If we found a chipmunk in the kitchen, we’d scream, freak, call animal control and sanitize once the offending animal was gone. They shushed it with a broom and went on with life.
*****Victorian, which actually loved to pull on it’s history, so the room had a Tudor Rose on the floor, and Tudor Rose to match on the ceiling. She was only off by maybe 50 years, since Herny VIII was James I’s grandfather. (Henry/Elizabeth = Tudor, James = Stuart/Jacobean)
+Read: Lazy
++Aunt Barbara, if you read this, email me and I’ll give you the names.
Still it was an interesting little place. Bacon’s Castle is one of the three oldest standing brick buildings in the Northern Hemisphere. The other two are in the Caribbean, one of those is in Barbados.
It was a bit of disappointment driving up and not seeing a castle like we would think of castle, but a Jacobean/Greek revival house.
The house was actually built by a one Mister Arthur Allen, who apparently came from nothing and made his own fortunes. Allen’s house was HUGE for the time, being one half of the house you see above (the left half). But even today, the house is large for a middle class family home.
So, why if Mr. Allen built the house, is it called Bacon’s Castle? Because of Bacon’s Rebellion, of course!
Yeah, exactly. Bacon’s Rebellion? What the heck are you talking about? Bear with me as I attempt to explain a political uprising from 1676… Nathanial Bacon was a plantation owner who demanded an aggressive policy against the native Americans. However, Governor Berkeley didn’t want an aggressive policy against the Doeg, Susquehannock and Appomattox people. Well, Bacon didn’t give a damn. He went and kidnapped some of the Appomattox because he said they stole some corn. Berkeley didn’t like that, so he gave the Appomattox some guns and gun powder. Bacon didn’t like that, so he went and laid siege to the capital of… something. Richmond maybe? They fled to the Eastern Shore and on the way laid siege to Mr. Allen’s house.
Here’s the thing—they aren’t sure that Bacon ever even walked in the door of this place. Just that his buddies took over, and made it a fortified place to hide from the governor*.
And because it was fortified, it was therefore given the moniker of “castle”.
Bacon’s Castle is down a barely paved road that you get to by following a small country road. You go down the barely paved road and find a dirt road. At the end of this dirt road is the house. Oh, I might mention that there are tobacco fields everywhere.
This house has stood through the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, it’s changed hands dozens of times. There were wealthy owners, there were poor owners. The original house was a Jacobean style house. There are almost no examples of this in the US, whereas England… well they’ve got towns built like this.
The second part of the house was an addition in the late 1700/early 1800 and is called Greek Revival. If you take a look at it up there on the right, it’s more boxy, and there should actually be a large porch with columns, and you would really see it.
So we pulled up, and… we’re the only ones visiting at that moment. Private tour. Sweet. Well, it’s a partially empty house because they don’t have the right furniture to put it to accurately portray each period that the house occupied. One of the rooms however, they not only have furnished, but furnished to the time period, restored the windows, and have an original piece in the house.
In the master bedroom, where the masters of the house would have take breakfast every morning (so this room is LARGE) was the bed**, some pots, two tables, a dresser and a cradle. The cradle was apparently the property of Arthur Allen. So that cradle is original to the house. They were surprised to find it in the attic of the house when the AVPA bought the house in 1972. They also found a spinning wheel from the mid to late 1600s in the attic with it.
The attic was actually a grain storage bin when the house was originally built. It was eventually turned into a spinning room, wood storage and servant’s quarters. You could see the roofing nails through the roof, and I was a little surprised to see that they looked just exactly like the one that my parents had throughout their house*** when they were revamping it.
There were a few other room, but most of those were unremarkable because there was no furniture in them. We went down to the basement. Houses in this area (Hampton Roads) don’t have basement because of the extremely high water table and very rare chance of frost freeze down far enough to endanger the house. So the basement was a bit of novelty.
And the gentlemen who took the time to restore this house was amazing. He used as much of the original building as he could—which meant that he dove-tailed in pieces of new wood with the old stuff in the support beams! so that it was as authentic as possible. I had never seen this before and I was amazed at the dedication to authenticity that this man had in order to do something like that.
The basement was a summer kitchen, wood (then coal) storage and a wine cellar. The summer kitchen didn’t have windows. Well, there were windows, but they were holes to the outside. Small rodents and mammals could get in and out of the kitchen with ease. There were bars to keep the larger ones out****. It the winter, they used the kitchen as a smoke house and storage for winter goods.
So, then we were bought up to the Parlor. The house reigned over by a very strong woman for the later half of the 1800s (who name I cannot remember for the life of me) and during this time, she whipped the house back into shape. She decorated this parlor with the sense of the time***** and it was apparently a smashing room!
Well, here’s a little something you didn’t know about these wacky Victorians: it was all the rage to write in the glass of the windows. As you walk around the room, you see phrases and names and pictures in the glass. I just kept thinking how I would gotten my butt beat for even thinking of that. But they have a pane out of one of the windows that has an entire original letter written to one of the ladies who lived there who was being courted by a gentleman. It was neat.
We came across a window with some names on it, and I was shocked to see my maiden name on it! I had done some research years ago to see if I could find out more about our ancestry, and I was fairly unsuccessful+. However, I did come across a Captain in the Civil War (for the North who served in and around Richmond) who could have been related to us. Like I said, I was “unsuccessful” in my pursuits. Well, here was someone who either could be related to me or to this gentleman++ I had found in the research. It was really cool.
Outside this parlor you could see a warming wall and a garden. The garden was a restoration of the original kitchen garden that had been planted by Arthur Allen to supply his family with fresh herbs, spices and vegetables. It had been lost for years and years, and some historians weren’t even sure the stories of it were true. It was a garden that would have been helpful to both American and English historians, as most kitchen gardens from the 1600s are long gone, plowed under and built upon.
Well, the gentleman who did the restoration said that there had to be a garden out there because of the way the land was laid out. He sent a few workers out to poke around and low and behold, they found the original paths. It didn’t take long to uncover the whole garden and by the layout were able to recreate 4 or the original 8 garden squares. The warming wall was built at the back after the discovery to make more of a traditional English garden than a kitchen garden. There was a wedding setting up in the garden.
So, the last thing they have to display in this house is the midden heap findings. The garbage people. Art and architecture can tell you what people thought and appreciated, but garbage tells you the real story! Any archeologist who finds the community dump hits pay dirt. They had selections from the midden heap that included bottles of wine, pottery, real china (when china was from China) and some silver and copper. I won’t bore you with details, but suffice to say that if you were into archeology, it was most delightful.
We thanked the lady and walked back out the car. Tom looked back at the house as we climbed in. “Well, it’s a really nice, historic old house, but not nearly enough bacon.”
-----------------------------------
*At the time, Bacon was considered a hero, but within about 10 years, he was and still is considered a traitor. Want to learn more? Bacon’s Rebellion
**I’ll get into Renaissance, Jacobean, and Georgian beds when I get to the Jamestown Settlement blog.
***We’re inclined to believe their house was built around 1915 because we found newspaper from 1917 stuffed in places as insulation. Houses weren’t built in 6 months back then like they are today.
**** It always amazes me how people years ago were so non-plussed by animals and rodents and insects. If we found a chipmunk in the kitchen, we’d scream, freak, call animal control and sanitize once the offending animal was gone. They shushed it with a broom and went on with life.
*****Victorian, which actually loved to pull on it’s history, so the room had a Tudor Rose on the floor, and Tudor Rose to match on the ceiling. She was only off by maybe 50 years, since Herny VIII was James I’s grandfather. (Henry/Elizabeth = Tudor, James = Stuart/Jacobean)
+Read: Lazy
++Aunt Barbara, if you read this, email me and I’ll give you the names.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
The Virginia Blogs: The Top Ten Reasons Tom and Jenn are Moving!
10. The Hot Spot Card
There's nothing quite like receiving a "Hot Spot" card once a week, slipped under your door. What's a Hot Spot card? Why, its a prepaid card that you fill out annonymously and send to the police about the illegal activities, such as drug dealing, you have seen. Oh, yeah.
9. 50 Cent at 2:50 a.m.
There's nothing quite like being treated to a form of music you don't really enjoy loudly at 3 a.m. with the bass up so loud you're getting heart palpitations while you sit there and try to ignore it. I don't begrudge you your kicker or your rap, but I will call the cops on you at 3 a.m. for waking my butt out of a dead sleep.
8. Neighbors who don't have keys
BANG BANG BANG goes the door at 12:30 a.m.*
7. The Shower you can't shower in.
For the first two weeks we lived here we couldn't shower** because we couldn't turn the water to the shower head. The maintenance guy came, squirted some lithium grease into the handle and walked away. Didn't work. Finally, I just grabbed it with both hands and yanked as hard as I could. Bonus on this one: There's no drain trap. It's just a hole that the water goes down and the bugs come up.
6. Swinging cabinets.
So, I walked into the kitchen one day to start making dinner. I open the cabinet to get the pot out, and out walks a cat. Great. Wash off the fuzz, and go get the rice to start it. Open the upper cabinet, out walks another cat. Bwah? I get the rice and close the cabinet. A moment later, I turn back to the cabinet to get something and BANG! nail my head on the corner of the door. Not for the life of me had I been able to keep the cabinet closed and consquently keep the cats out of my cabinets.*** Did I mention that they had to hack into the lip of them upper set to get the fridge under it?
5. Micro-Climates
Downstairs, it's a lovely, non-humid 73 degrees Farenheit. So cool that I usually have to wear long, light yoga pants. Upstairs, it's like ag-d damnedsauna. On average, if it's 90 out, it's 80 in the bedroom. If it's 97, you're looking at wonderful 84 or 85* So hot and humid that the shower towels wouldn't dry!****
4. Rugs
... that give you athlete's foot because no one has bothered to clean them in who knows how long. Hell, why even vacuum before your new tenants move in?
3. Nothing really fits
You have to close the front door just so. The upstairs faucets are reversed*****, the railing on the stairs is loose and splintery. The closet doors either don't close, don't close correctly, hop the track and in one case, decide they don't want to be a door any more and completely leave the closet altogether. There's no sanding before painting, and there is painting over scotch tape. The toilet seats don't go up and down-- you have to peel them apart, and they never really close all the way. Nothing really fits.
2. Appliances that suck.
So, I decide that I'm going to make a turkey. Not really a problem, until I try to put it in the oven. The oven door doesn't open all the way. So I wrestle it a bit until I deem it necessary to call Tom in to help me with this. He walks in, and finds me standing there holding a 350 degree oven door in the middle of the kitchen. Yes, that's right folks, I managed to dislodge the oven door. They replaced the oven about three weeks later. But then there's also the dishwasher that doesn't wash glasses. Every time I put glasses in the dishwasher, I have to rewash them by hand. Silly person, it's a dishwasher right?
And,
1.
________________________________________
*Yeah, apparently, no one around here can do these thing during normal, non-ridiculous hours.
** Don't worry. We both took sponge baths and regular baths for the time it took me to figure out how to turn on the water.
***Babies R Us to the rescue. Thank heavens for child proof clips.
****Solved by removing the AC vent, turning it around and having the air in the bathroom blow up and onto them as much as we could get it.
*****Let's not talk about how delightful it is to turn on the faucet you think is cold, and burn your hand on the water because some numbnuts reversed the feeds.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
The Virginia Blogs: Oh, Good. No Codpieces*
It was a rainy weekend and we needed something indoors to do. We eliminated Nautilus and Air and Space Museum because we thought that they would be too filled with screaming kids on a rainy weekend. We have a bit of aversion to screaming out of control kids.
Well, truth be told, we have a bit of an aversion to people.
So, we chose the Chrysler Museum. We always like a good museum.
As the name says, it’s the Chrysler museum, and upon arrival, there was a huge banner on the front of austere, understated building that said: Enter To Win a New Chrysler.
Oh, my.
However, aside from that and the prize parked out in front of the entrance, there wasn’t much more blatant evidence of the corporate nature of the museum. In fact, it’s a very nice museum. Small, but nice.
We started on the first floor, skipping the glass galleries. I have seen too much Louis Comfort Tiffany glass in my life to even be slightly interested in seeing more. R is a huge fan of Tiffany and for every art class we had in college was another trip to the Metropolitan Museum in the city and another trip to the Tiffany glass galleries. Now, talk to me about Frank Lloyd Wright glass, and we’ve got a conversation going.
Back to the museum at hand. We decided to start downstairs with the Greek and Egyptian and Pre-Columbian galleries. There were a few very nice amphora and broaches in the Greek. There was an amazing sarcophagus, in granite, in the Egyptian display*, and I am apparently watching too much about Pharaohs and ancient Egypt because I’m able to quickly identify cartouches and some of the hieroglyphs.
The Pre-Columbian*** room was a bit of a confusing room. It was rather an expansive collection of some excellent examples of the different cultures, but they didn’t label the cultures that the object came from. Since there was a long time when I was kid that I wanted to be an archeologist, I love studying objects from ancient cultures. I have recently started learning more about the South American cultures and I thought that if I could tell where they were from, why couldn’t they find an archeology student to identify and label them? Ah, well. We still liked it. They did have some very nice Maya artifacts.
We walked out to a hallway and found the stairs to the second floor. We were discharged from the stairs at the Hall of Statues. This is another joy and delight to Tom and I -—we like Rodin. I have been to the Musee Rodin in Paris; we found a fantastic Rodin (et Claudel) display in Switzerland+ and we’ve been to the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, where the original Le Penseur resides.
Our friend Rodin, however, was clearly French and this museum preferred American artists. So there was no Rodin. There were however three busts at the end of the room of George, Abe and… Stonewall Jackson?
…oh that’s right. We’re in the south. They love him down here. There’s even the Stonewall Jackson Shrine.
Ah, yes. Ahem. Time to move along? Indubitably.
There was a wonderful room of photography, including an original Ansel Adams, but you can’t really take a picture of a picture. So we were onward again into the modern art.
I hate modern art.
Our first example. It was huge. Not only huge, but if you look on the floor you can seen a piece of black tape. Do Not Cross the Tape. It makes the museum gods angry and rings a bell. Loudly. I get up to this huge piece of art and there was some explanation of existential bullpoop, but all I kept thinking was, it looks like someone didn’t Shout out the grape juice.
Next to it we had:
Ugh!! I hate when museums hang these! Hate it! This is a Painting I exercise that every art student in the world does. Someone else’s vertical homework is no better than mine, just bigger.
So, moving on… we come across this:
I call it Foot With Pancake. And all of sudden I wanted IHOP for dinner. It was suppoed to evoke erotic feelings, but it only invoked Pancakes in my mind. We turned into the room and found the only really cool piece of modern art that I think I have ever seen.
I think it was called “Dress I” or something along that order. But I thought that it was really neat, how you could see the motion in the dress. It was carved out of glass, and I just really liked it.
There was another display, excuse me, installation called Hamlet. It was made of televisions which flashed scenes from several different versions of the Shakespeare play. It was about 15 feet tall and had a crown and scepter.
FAIL! This display, which was supposed to be an homage to the Shakespeare play, was El Wrong-o. Naturally the two English degrees would notice this -—at the end of the play Hamlet is never king. “Adieu, wreched queen! Horatio, I die”++ and all that jazz. He’s not the king and so he shouldn’t have a crown.
After listening to me blather on about inaccurate literary representation, Tom started walking out of the room, which I took as the signal to start moving on.
We moved onto the portraits room. There were plenty of them, none of them particularly stood out as ground breaking works of art, however there were a few notables. One was George Washington+++.
It was early American painting, without the refined edges of European painters of the time, but it wasn't bad.
We walked into another gallery and there were some students standing there looking at a portrait:
And the one kid was looking at it and looking at and looking at. He walked one way, then walked the other, then stood directly infront of it, and finally said to his classmates, "You know, if we did that to her face, we'd get in trouble but this one is hanging in a museum."
His classmates laughed, and said, "She's wearing a veil, dude. That's from her hat."
"Oh." I couldn't help giggling. Because so many times I've thought the same thing about a painting. (Please see three mentioned above.)
Naturally, there is no museum trip that is complete without the wonders of an Indiana Jones quote. "Yes, this is castle, and there are many tapestries, and if you are a Scottish Lord, then I am Mickey Mouse!"
At this point we were just about through the whole museum and it was nearly time to go. But we found a very interesting small gallery on the way out. They just a few small socialist paintings from the Soviet Union in the 1950s. It was really quite interesting that they even controlled the art that their people could produce. These were all paintings of people, faceless and nameless, toiling in the fields or factories for the good of the people. They were all happy and they were all annoymous. You weren't allowed to do any kind of individuality in the painting-- everyone had to work for the good the people and the good of the country. I really wish they had more of them, I would have liked to see how far they took this control of the arts.
We were were treated to sunny skies when we walked out and there was a nice little garden next to the museum, and we stopped for a minute to check it out. And T needed a smoke after all that art.
_____________________
*please see Alpenzoo and Scheizer! for more information.
**Nothing though, short of Egypt itself, will ever out do the amazing King Tut display that we were able to see at the Franklin Institute. Simply amazing.
***‘Pre-Columbian’ is the general term for any of the cultures that exist in the Americas before Columbus landed. It’s a bit of an unfair misnomer. These were huge and powerful Empires, such as the Inca, the Aztec and Maya, or they were enduring, ancient cultures such as the Inuit, Lakota, and Cherokee nations. But then, I’m sure we have our wonderful Victorian predecessors**** to thank for such a Euro-centric name.
****I blame the Victorians for a lot of ills our modern society. They were a little uptight and backwards.
+Blog to be linked.
++ Actually:
HAMLET
O, I die, Horatio;
The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit:
I cannot live to hear the news from England;
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;
So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited. The rest is silence.
+++We can't seem to get away from this guy. Whereever we live, Washington Slept Here. We currently live on the Washington/Rochambeau Route.
Well, truth be told, we have a bit of an aversion to people.
So, we chose the Chrysler Museum. We always like a good museum.
As the name says, it’s the Chrysler museum, and upon arrival, there was a huge banner on the front of austere, understated building that said: Enter To Win a New Chrysler.
Oh, my.
However, aside from that and the prize parked out in front of the entrance, there wasn’t much more blatant evidence of the corporate nature of the museum. In fact, it’s a very nice museum. Small, but nice.
We started on the first floor, skipping the glass galleries. I have seen too much Louis Comfort Tiffany glass in my life to even be slightly interested in seeing more. R is a huge fan of Tiffany and for every art class we had in college was another trip to the Metropolitan Museum in the city and another trip to the Tiffany glass galleries. Now, talk to me about Frank Lloyd Wright glass, and we’ve got a conversation going.
Back to the museum at hand. We decided to start downstairs with the Greek and Egyptian and Pre-Columbian galleries. There were a few very nice amphora and broaches in the Greek. There was an amazing sarcophagus, in granite, in the Egyptian display*, and I am apparently watching too much about Pharaohs and ancient Egypt because I’m able to quickly identify cartouches and some of the hieroglyphs.
The Pre-Columbian*** room was a bit of a confusing room. It was rather an expansive collection of some excellent examples of the different cultures, but they didn’t label the cultures that the object came from. Since there was a long time when I was kid that I wanted to be an archeologist, I love studying objects from ancient cultures. I have recently started learning more about the South American cultures and I thought that if I could tell where they were from, why couldn’t they find an archeology student to identify and label them? Ah, well. We still liked it. They did have some very nice Maya artifacts.
We walked out to a hallway and found the stairs to the second floor. We were discharged from the stairs at the Hall of Statues. This is another joy and delight to Tom and I -—we like Rodin. I have been to the Musee Rodin in Paris; we found a fantastic Rodin (et Claudel) display in Switzerland+ and we’ve been to the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, where the original Le Penseur resides.
Our friend Rodin, however, was clearly French and this museum preferred American artists. So there was no Rodin. There were however three busts at the end of the room of George, Abe and… Stonewall Jackson?
…oh that’s right. We’re in the south. They love him down here. There’s even the Stonewall Jackson Shrine.
Ah, yes. Ahem. Time to move along? Indubitably.
There was a wonderful room of photography, including an original Ansel Adams, but you can’t really take a picture of a picture. So we were onward again into the modern art.
I hate modern art.
Our first example. It was huge. Not only huge, but if you look on the floor you can seen a piece of black tape. Do Not Cross the Tape. It makes the museum gods angry and rings a bell. Loudly. I get up to this huge piece of art and there was some explanation of existential bullpoop, but all I kept thinking was, it looks like someone didn’t Shout out the grape juice.
Next to it we had:
Ugh!! I hate when museums hang these! Hate it! This is a Painting I exercise that every art student in the world does. Someone else’s vertical homework is no better than mine, just bigger.
So, moving on… we come across this:
I call it Foot With Pancake. And all of sudden I wanted IHOP for dinner. It was suppoed to evoke erotic feelings, but it only invoked Pancakes in my mind. We turned into the room and found the only really cool piece of modern art that I think I have ever seen.
I think it was called “Dress I” or something along that order. But I thought that it was really neat, how you could see the motion in the dress. It was carved out of glass, and I just really liked it.
There was another display, excuse me, installation called Hamlet. It was made of televisions which flashed scenes from several different versions of the Shakespeare play. It was about 15 feet tall and had a crown and scepter.
FAIL! This display, which was supposed to be an homage to the Shakespeare play, was El Wrong-o. Naturally the two English degrees would notice this -—at the end of the play Hamlet is never king. “Adieu, wreched queen! Horatio, I die”++ and all that jazz. He’s not the king and so he shouldn’t have a crown.
After listening to me blather on about inaccurate literary representation, Tom started walking out of the room, which I took as the signal to start moving on.
We moved onto the portraits room. There were plenty of them, none of them particularly stood out as ground breaking works of art, however there were a few notables. One was George Washington+++.
It was early American painting, without the refined edges of European painters of the time, but it wasn't bad.
We walked into another gallery and there were some students standing there looking at a portrait:
And the one kid was looking at it and looking at and looking at. He walked one way, then walked the other, then stood directly infront of it, and finally said to his classmates, "You know, if we did that to her face, we'd get in trouble but this one is hanging in a museum."
His classmates laughed, and said, "She's wearing a veil, dude. That's from her hat."
"Oh." I couldn't help giggling. Because so many times I've thought the same thing about a painting. (Please see three mentioned above.)
Naturally, there is no museum trip that is complete without the wonders of an Indiana Jones quote. "Yes, this is castle, and there are many tapestries, and if you are a Scottish Lord, then I am Mickey Mouse!"
At this point we were just about through the whole museum and it was nearly time to go. But we found a very interesting small gallery on the way out. They just a few small socialist paintings from the Soviet Union in the 1950s. It was really quite interesting that they even controlled the art that their people could produce. These were all paintings of people, faceless and nameless, toiling in the fields or factories for the good of the people. They were all happy and they were all annoymous. You weren't allowed to do any kind of individuality in the painting-- everyone had to work for the good the people and the good of the country. I really wish they had more of them, I would have liked to see how far they took this control of the arts.
We were were treated to sunny skies when we walked out and there was a nice little garden next to the museum, and we stopped for a minute to check it out. And T needed a smoke after all that art.
_____________________
*please see Alpenzoo and Scheizer! for more information.
**Nothing though, short of Egypt itself, will ever out do the amazing King Tut display that we were able to see at the Franklin Institute. Simply amazing.
***‘Pre-Columbian’ is the general term for any of the cultures that exist in the Americas before Columbus landed. It’s a bit of an unfair misnomer. These were huge and powerful Empires, such as the Inca, the Aztec and Maya, or they were enduring, ancient cultures such as the Inuit, Lakota, and Cherokee nations. But then, I’m sure we have our wonderful Victorian predecessors**** to thank for such a Euro-centric name.
****I blame the Victorians for a lot of ills our modern society. They were a little uptight and backwards.
+Blog to be linked.
++ Actually:
HAMLET
O, I die, Horatio;
The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit:
I cannot live to hear the news from England;
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;
So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited. The rest is silence.
+++We can't seem to get away from this guy. Whereever we live, Washington Slept Here. We currently live on the Washington/Rochambeau Route.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)