Posted by pete on February 8th, 2010 in DayToDay ·
Focus, optimization. Simplification. The reduction of complexity down to the origin. The concentration of information, of … flavor. “The” point of light in the darkness. These are the things beyond wealth that are worth seeking; at least from my perspective. Yet, in the end you should not expect “more” as you will not always find it.
I remember back in college a frustrating experience of having to write a project in a language I did not know and was not taught. The more I learned and the more I figured out how to optimize in this language the shorter the code became. At the end of two longs weeks I had only a single sheet of paper to turn in, not the reams of code that we often looked forward to retrieving from the massive line printer, in the depths of a building at four in the morning, having to wake the grad student, sleeping on the vintage WWII cot next the secondary printer waiting for his/her dissertation project to print out by the submission deadline, just to receive ours. Just one sheet was all I had to turn in. When I sheepishly handed it to my professor, he asked what was wrong. I replied that several weeks of work only ended in an answer that was one page in length and that I was sure I had missed the point but was unsure if i had totally understand the requirements.. With a smile the professor said, “if you had turned in anything over three pages, you would have received a zero.”
Take the ordinary, slightly boring, yet versatile , cut of meat like the pork tender lion. Poach it for 4 hours or so in lard, cool and encase in its own fat for one week to ripen and it is transformed into something just short of amazing. Along the same lines, take a gallon of hot water, dissolve a typical brine, one cup of salt to a half a cup of sugar, then add some aromatics, like bay leaves, crushed juniper berries, pepper corns, a kiss of anise and soaks a chicken at a rate of 2 hours per kilo. When ready roast at 400 until done. Simply amazing. Don’t be fooled by massive amounts of input and long preparation. It is not always the recipe for success, or a good product. Quite often, simplicity is better than all of that.
Posted by pete on February 5th, 2010 in DayToDay and PJE Orginal ·
If the carbon lump that are the remains of my once brain are put under any more pressure, maybe they will turn into a diamond.
Posted by pete on January 30th, 2010 in DayToDay and Photos ·
I made an outstanding bolognaise this afternoon. It is a long hour standing in front of the stove and a tiring hour of constant stirring, but totally worth it. Opened up the first can of tomatoes from the summer and they are totally worth enduring the hot summer kitchen as well.
I started seasoning and curing a couple of pork loins that I will confit tomorrow. It was nice, in the dead of winter, to still be able to walk outside and harvest something from the garden. My sage bush is still hanging in there. In fact, I like it much better now then in the summer as it is more mild. The cure/seasoning smells lovely, don’t know if I will be able to wait a week before diving in. We will have to see.
It never got into the double digits today, and the rivers are again quickly freezing over. Where there are ice jams, there are going to be around for quite some time this year. When the second breakup happens, it will potentially be very problematic along some sections of the river.
Sunset tonight down by Lake Champlain.
Facing in the opposite direction, there is a little of an alpine glow affect on the eastern horizon. I would loved to have stayed a while and listened to the ice, but it was 2 degrees and my hands kept sticking to the tripod as I did not bring any gloves. Some most eerie sounds ice can make.
Posted by pete on January 29th, 2010 in Landscapes and Photos ·
It is amazing how one small event like Monday’s can change so much. That probably applies to many things. The surge on both branches happened less than 5 hours apart and the ice front, if you will, passed any given point within minutes, yet it has reshaped the river, redistributed rocks, moved channels, and permanently alter surrounding boggy areas. Just amazing to think about.
Pictures from up river, where the river is only a couple of feet deep and a couple of feet below the road. There is still a huge jam about 3/4 a mile long. It flowed over the road and well into the surrounding bog/woods on the other side of the road.
The twigs in the lower right give you an idea how big this piece of ice on the road was.
Put the car into the picture for a little extra sense of scale.
Posted by pete on January 26th, 2010 in DayToDay and Photos ·
The ice on the west branch did in fact break last night but it held out long enough to let the east branch start to recede a bit. About 1/2 a foot from causing some real trouble. There was ice on the roads and a good bit of tree damage along the banks of the river.
Here was the river in front of the house this morning.
The last bridge down by Lake Champlain. I am once again surprised it is still in one piece. The water is usually a good 25 even 30 feet below the bridge ( this is the down stream side )
Looking down stream from the bridge. You don’t get the sense for the scale, but the trees are on the bank about the same height as the bridge and the ice is several feet into the trees. There was literally water bubbling up and out of either side of the river. The whole area down to the lake is totally inundated with several feet of water. Last year it froze solid. I can not image how the trees survive such events.
Posted by pete on January 25th, 2010 in DayToDay ·
Still dry for now. The East Branch broke around 7pm and jumped a couple of feet into flood stage projected to crest around 9 or 10pm into moderate flood stage. 9N which runs along the East Branch is partially closed in sections to clean up ice that flowed onto the road. So far the ice on the West Branch is still holding. It if breaks tonight, it could cause some serious damage downtown, which is partially shutdown already.
Posted by pete on January 24th, 2010 in DayToDay and Photos ·
It was quite a lovely weekend, just beautiful weather. Unfortunately I don’t feel that I did much to take advantage of it. Couple of hikes, moves some wood around but that was it. Too many things to take care of as the previous week was quite busy and too many projects on the brain. There is already a noticeable increase in the day light, but a whole lot of winter left.
I commented to myself today how dry it has been and how little water there is in the rivers, even though the flowing water is “higher” normal because of the ice. Ironically, as I post this, tonight we are now under a flood watch. Big day of rain an mid 30s on the way for Monday. I expect the ice to break up tomorrow. The ice is not as thick as last year, but it has been “flowing” more, even piling up on the rocks and banks in the front of the house. As a result there just may be more ice then last year. Monday should be interesting.
Posted by pete on January 17th, 2010 in DayToDay and Photos ·
It was warm again this morning. I let the fire go out for the third time in the same number of days. Don’t know how I feel about that in January. I made a pledge to myself that today would be a binary mistress free day.
I moved wood from the garage to the porch, made bread and cheese for later in the week. As the retreating snow started to uncover the raised beds just off the porch, Ember and I started talking about where the new beds were going to go and what we were going to plant where. I am thinking mostly heirlooms, but Ember quickly got distracted by a stray “lady bug” that was not really a “real” lady bug and I was left to search for seeds on my own. That meant turning a computer. After a few of the addictive click, click, clicks of tactile feedback while searching for seeds my mind started wandered to multi-space feature transform and some responsibilities for the “other job” I have been putting off. Time to leave…
I went for a walk that I knew went through a beaver pond. In retrospect, maybe not the best choice after three days of 40+ degrees.
There were some interesting “run-run-slide-run-run-slide” tacks in the snow. They were too old to make out exactly what they were. Sooooo much like otter behavior but that would not fit in this area, yet too big for mink and too big a gate for beaver.
The snow betrayed the mystery of the woods and revealed a venerable highway of that which comes before us.
An unexpected pop and crack of the ice lead to a reflex squeeze of the trigger, which just so happens to have caught the encroaching subtle grasp and encompassing pull of the shadows to somewhere…else.
Posted by pete on January 16th, 2010 in DayToDay ·
I need to use one bag of tomato sauce and one bag of green/yellow beans per week to empty out the freezer by the time the garden is starting to produce fresh things. I have also come to the conclusion that mattresses are stupid expensive. Nonetheless, not having one for over 10 years and being in the house for almost 2.5 years, I thought it was time to break down and buy one. Now I just feel broken or broke, or maybe both.
Posted by pete on January 15th, 2010 in DayToDay ·
I have come to think that putting in a full weeks worth of work every 2.5 days is not healthy over an extended period of time.