The full view of the project, before it's mounted and matted.

More detail...

Jonathan Coulton, Marian Call, Chris Collingwood, John Flansburgh, Vi Hart, John Hodgman

John Hodgman, Molly Lewis, MC Frontalot, Paul. Storm

Storm, David Rees, John Roderick, Joseph Scrimshaw, Paul F. Thompkins, Wil Wheaton

If you want to make your own version of this, I’ll send you the PDF of the pattern. Creative commons, you know.

I plan to get the matte attached by the friday before the cruise and bring it along so you can all see! And so I can get autographs from all of the performers. That’ll be a nice keepsake, eh?

–J

Take a pencil. Hold it out in the palm of your hand. Is your hand steady? Does it shake? Does your hand wobble a bit, up and down. Your muscles aren’t able to hold something steady like that. Not really. They are pulling both up and down at the same time. Your brain and your eyes tell your your muscles dozens of times a second how to move to keep your palm up and in the same position holding that pencil.

I think life is sort of like that, too. We are always forced to adapt to new things, new changes, new experiences, new conditions that make up our ever-changing world. The trouble comes in when we resist those changes. We fight tooth and nail (figuratively, of course) to keep things as they were, but things are never as they were. That’s the big joke. The more we fight it, the more miserable we are.

There are certain people in my life who are unable to come to terms with the fact that I am not the same person that I was a few years ago. Circumstances and a desire to grow as a person have caused this change. What used to be the norm for me has changed and it’s hard for them to come to terms with that. What’s really hard for them to see is that this new me is a more healthier me. Maybe one day things will click.

And now that I think about it, I wonder if they themselves haven’t changed somewhat. Hard to say, really. I can’t assume anything either way. Not until I think about this some more.

In any case, life has something planned for you. Be ready for it. Big or small, it will require of you an adjustment. I guarantee it.

https://twitter.com/#!/cajunjoel/status/136310520348282880

It’s partially a joke, because I managed to somehow book my hotel for one night when I needed four for a conference here in Chicago. I am about to check out of my room and move to another hotel for the next two nights. (They were able to accommodate me for one more night. Yay, me.)

But this really turns out to be a failure on multiple levels. Let’s break them down:

Failure #1. This one is all mine. I booked the hotel wrong on the website, I didn’t review the reservation, I didn’t review my paperwork. I take full responsibility for this one. My penance: skipping dinner with my colleagues from around the world (really!) to search for a new hotel in a city where every hotel is booked solid, except the Trump Luxury Suites (or whatever it was called) for $650 a night. (for the record, I found a room a bit further out of the city.)

Failure #2. The hotel. When you check in to a hotel, do they review your planned stay with you? “Thank you for your credit card, Mr. Richard. We have you staying for one night, checking out tomorrow by 11am. Sign here.” “Woah, wait, one night? No, I need three!” This didn’t happen. I’m not saying this is this hotel’s policy, but this has been the case in the past and it didn’t happen here. Even though we step back to Failure #1, this could have helped the situation by catching it earlier.

Failure #3. Overnight, a bill was slipped under my door for the two nights in which I stayed here. Good, procedures are being followed. They certainly weren’t being followed the night before when I didn’t get a bill for my first night’s stay. Not even a receipt. Had I received that I would have been on the phone finding a new hotel at 7am instead of 7pm and I would have a different experience and possibly a greater chance at finding a close-in hotel somewhere other that Mr. Mega-millions Luxury Motel.

I’m not blaming the hotel for this. I made the mistake. I didn’t follow my own procedure to review my trip info before I left.

But what it really brought to mind was that when we develop software and websites, it’s important to have procedures on how we do that. From planning to development to testing to documentation to usability and incorporating user feedback, we need sound processes that are always followed. This insures the highest quality product and the highest level of service to our customers, users and patrons.

And maybe you won’t be left trying to avoid sleeping on the streets of Chicago, either.

It was sudden, but not unexpected. She’d been sick for a while, but we did our best to make sure she didn’t suffer. I accept that our pets must die for they don’t live as long as we do, but as their owners, we must make sure that we keep them free of pain and suffering. I have to remind myself almost hourly that we did our best by her.

Now, our condo is a constant reminder of her absence. I think that’s the hardest part. From the place where her food and water constantly got in the way of my feet in the kitchen, to the sun shining in the window onto the bed, where she would lay for hours in winter soaking in the heat. Even the color of the carpet and the shades on the wall are reminiscent of the grey of her fur and the green of her eyes.

I feel cheated. Angry. Furious at the unfairness of the world. She was only 11 years old. Cats live longer than that. I knew she was getting old and had arthritis in her hips, but I wasn’t prepared for this. She got sick. She stopped eating. We took to the vet, we got her IV fluids, we tried to get her to eat. But in the end, I think it was cancer that got her. We had a biopsy taken just yesterday. The results won’t be in until next week.

I console myself that she went when she was ready to go. It was her choice, not ours. We just weren’t ready for it. We didn’t recognize the signs at the time. We rushed her to the Veterinary ER at 6am. She was gone five minutes after arrival. The staff there were exceptionally kind and understanding for people who probably see this every day. They said that some animals ‘check out’ when they go and that their body takes a little longer to figure it out. I think this was the case with our Coby. It’s going to be hard to remember things other than the glazed-over look in her eyes as I broke several traffic laws to get to the Vet as fast as I could.

When we came home, broken hearted, to an empty home, we cleaned, the activity giving us something to take our mind off. But it’s not enough. Eventually you run out of things to do. Your mind wanders back to that shadow, is that here laying there in the corner? Or you see the corner of the wall where she used to rub her cheek. Or the end of the couch that was essentially reserved for her. But the food bowl is gone, waiting to be washed and put away. The blanket on the couch is in the wash with all the towels we’d put on the floor to make cleanup easier.

How do you get through? I can just hope that the hurt is less tomorrow than it is today.

God, I miss my cat.

Introducing: the roux

The roux is the most important part. 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour, and up to 1 cup of oil, though you can get away with 1/2 to 2/3 cup. More on this later.

The prep

So, first, put on some shoes. You’ll be standing for at least 20 minutes. And before you start the roux, dice your veggies first. Onion, Celery, Bell pepper. I measure by dicing 1-2 onions (depending on my mood) and 1-2 bell peppers (about the same amount), and an equal amount of celery. Big dice, small dice, your choice. This is peasant food, but I like it chunky. Put them in the big pot. You know, the big one. You do have one, right? How can you make soup without one? Have a good 2-3 cups of water standing by, too. You’ll need more, but not til later.

Starting the roux

So, heat your heavy 12-inch cast iron skillet. You like to cook, I assume you have one. Do not use stainless steel if you can. Do not use nonstick, ever. Heat on medium to medium low. Medium will go faster but risks burning. Use a wooden spoon, the sacrificial kind, you’re going to seriously brown the end of it. Add the oil and flour. Start stirring.  It’ll turn into a paste. If it’s seems watery before the skillet is hot, you have too much oil, but that’s not the end of the world. You can skim it off later. The mix may start out a bit dry and crumbly, but the oil will thin out as it heats. If when the heat is fully on it’s still dry, add a bit more oil.

Stir. Keep stirring, really. Don’t stop for more than a second. Burning the roux is the quickest way to ruin a gumbo. It should be a bit bubbly if you stop stirring, but you’re not stopping, are you?

Are we done yet?

Has it been 20 minutes yet? No? Probably not. Keep stirring, switch hands. Your arms are probably getting tired unless you do this often.

Are we done yet? Ok, sure.

Stir until the mix is dark rusty brown. We’re not looking for golden brown here. Deeper than that. Use your judgement, if you stop early, you’ll get a nice thick gumbo, but you may not have the real depth of flavor. If it smells burned, well, you can always start over.

When the roux is done, dump it into the soup pot with the veggies. (If you leave it in the skillet it will burn, of course.) It’ll sizzle and sputter, which is normal. You just dumped what is effective cajun napalm onto raw vegetables.

This does two things, it cooks them a bit and it cools off the roux a bit. Add the 2-3 cups of water. This will halts the cooking of the roux. It’ll be messy too, so stir it up some and get the roux and water mixed together.

Spice it up!

Add stuff to your taste. Cayenne, minced parsley, salt, pepper, garlic, thyme, oregano, bay leaf, whatever you like, really. Then you can throw in whatever meats you want. Chicken, andouille, seafood, okra. Check the web for ideas. I usually go with chicken and andouille. If you do chicken, you can put what cuts you like. The meat will cook off of the bones and then you can fish the bones out later. That’ll give it more flavor, too, boiling the bones.

If you want to put in some boneless cuts, then you can add chicken broth instead of water. Again, add anything you want but you’ll need enough liquid to cover everything. This is a soup after all.

Darnit, now I’m hungry!

Good! Let it sit for a couple of hours while everything simmers. If you’re doing seafood, add it last as it tends to cook fast.

Finishing touches

See if you can find some filé powder. That’s the ground leaves of the sassafras plant. It’s a thickener and it’ll give even more flavor that’s almost unique to cajun cooking. 2-3 tablespoons will do the trick.

If there’s a lot of oil on the top of your gumbo, you can skim it off with a spoon. Especially if you put a bunch of chicken in there.

Steam some rice. Traditional is white rice, but I’ll forgive you for using brown rice for a healthier kick. Put some rice in a bowl, cover with gumbo. Soup-style, not rice-and-gravy style. Open a beer. Eat. Enjoy.

Lastly

Sure, they are tasty and easy and there are a myraid of dipping sauces to accompany the golden nuggety goodness, but they are so bad for you! And they are marketing them directly to children!

So I comment on this to my wife and she suggest what alternative is there for a parent whose kid won’t eat anything? So I postulated that perhaps the child wouldn’t have acquired a taste for chicken nuggets if the parents hadn’t given them to the child in the first place?

And so the topic came up of what did people do when their kids didn’t like what was offered to them before there were chicken nuggets? Invented in the 1950s but first introduced to the American public in 1980, we were raised, for the most part, as children who didn’t know chicken nuggets. What did we eat before then? I guess we ate whatever was put in front of us. Our parents were, for the most part, children of depression-era parents who likely made sure they ate what was available, but as the generations went on, things changed we moved further and further away from that mindset.

Now we have super cheap, super-not-very-healthy food choices that may be on sale for $3.99 for a three pound bag of chicken nuggets. It baffles the mind the number of  choices we have available to us and yet none of them are terribly healthy for us. I’ve been trying to cook most or all of the food I eat and as much work as that is, I think I do feel better for it. At the least, I can say that I’m taking in fewer chemicals than before.

So here’s to making your own food, but sometimes I just crave that golden, delicious chicken nugget.

Yeah? Exactly! A three-year-old child who’s going to throw a temper tantrum in the grocery store if he doesn’t get that toy he sees in the checkout aisle.

What happened to us that we are unwilling to compromise? To see the other person’s point of view? It’s almost as of the two (or three, depending on how you count) sides of the table in these debt+budget “talks” are having a holy war. My god is better than you god, so we can’t see eye-to-eye on anything. There is no room for compromise when you’re talking about such intense and overwhelming ideology.

And yet this sort of thing comes down to the personal level, too. I have a friend who has republican (for lack of a better term) take on things, used to like Glenn Beck, etc, and it’s impossible to talk to her about politics. She gets all bent out of shape about what the liberals are doing this and that and it’s just spewing the crap that she’s gotten from television. Yet there’s no possible way of getting her to see that we’re in this situation because one side or the other created this situation.

In another situation personally, someone in my life wants to believe X despite actions of his own that caused things to be the way they are. There’s no reason, no discussion, no compromise. Just “my way or the highway.” Well, can you guess which one I took?

Oh, as for my political views: I subscribe to no party. All of them are crazy. You have to sell most or all of your soul to get into Congress these days. So I don’t trust any of them to do what’s right for the country anymore. Who bought their souls? People with deep pockets. Corporations. Special interests who want only what they want and to hell with everyone else. Sounds familiar?

There was a time when our country did have differences of opinion, but we pulled together for a common goal. Now, this doesn’t happen anymore. I think we won’t come together until things are really, really bad again. Personally I don’t want to see it get that bad, but it will if we continue doing what we’re doing.

But to be honest, my inner anarchist would like to see that happen. Just to see what happens. I feel I’m in a pretty good position overall and could weather another 5 or 10 years of economic misery in the country, but it would be hard to watch others have a much harder time than me. Who knows, it might happen anyway if things in congress continue going nowhere.

–J

Ok here’s another. There’s a joke I read somewhere “Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.” Funny. Ha ha. But we wouldn’t be nostalgic for how things were if they hadn’t changed.

Take the weather, which is always changing (catastrophic events aside, like tornadoes) What would we do with ourselves if we couldn’t complain about the weather? Think of all the opportunities for small talk that would be missed or bore us to death.

That’s life! And we wouldn’t have life without change.

So my life is changing, as it has for the past two years, give or take. What gets me is that why the changes seem so huge. Big, life-altering, change-your-retirement-plans, the future-is-not-as-you-thought-it-would-be changes. Things that make you look back and reevaluate… everything. How did I get here? What motivated me to do this or that? Did I really cause that to happen? How do I make up for it? How do I fix it? Can it be fixed? All the while trying not to beat yourself up over it because at the time you thought you were making good decisions, analyzing all possibilities and doing what was right for yourself, but in the end, you were, for many years, an ignorant 15-year-old who thought he knew everything.

And looking back, you want to smack yourself in the forehead. *smack*smack* Twice. Three times. Yes, some of the catalysts of change are myself, but sometimes it seems like others just come from nowhere. And coping with all of this at once can be a daunting task at a minimum.

You look around and you see people, friends, coworkers who have good lives and don’t have these problems and you say to yourself “Gee, they have it easy and I have it hard. Life sucks.” But every now and again you meet someone who seems to have it together on the outside, but on the inside things are all screwy and you have to step back and reassess and remember that comparing yourself to others is a dumb thing to do. Maybe most people just handle the things life throws at them better than others. Can I do that, too?

Life is change. Anything who says different is… lying?

But still, does it always have to be so hard? Where’s the change for the positive? Sooner or later, the dealer has to deal me an ace, right? Right? Bueller?

But in either case, as I’ve mentioned before, I take public transit to work and that has given me the opportunity to see things I’ve never taken the time to really see before. No, it’s not the gaggle of navy officers in their dress whites that inundated the subway car one day last fall. Nor is it the arrogance and audacity of the guy who sticks his foot in the subway door and forces his way in. Nor yet is it the smooth businessman hitting on the lady standing next to him when the train was superbly crowded (punchline: “When I’m this close to a woman, we usually have drinks.”)

New Tree Growth on an evergreen tree.

No, today, its nature in the springtime. I nearly always avoid being outdoors or opening the windows during the high point of spring. Usually it’s the insanely high pollen levels that would reduce me to a sniffling, sneezing, disgusting blob of concentrated unhappy. Thanks to modern medicine (screw you, DNA!) I can do moderately well most days in the spring, with some caveats that I can handle.

So I walk to the bus and I walk to work and I stand outside waiting for the metro. And this week, on the way to the bus stop, I saw, for the first time in either my entire life or so many years that I’ve forgotten, I saw a tree growing.

Yeah, I know! Crazy, huh? Trees take years to grow! But if you look closely and look at the right time of year, you can watch it happen. Day by day, opening like the petals on a flower, a tree produces its own new sprig of leaves. Once you know what to look for, it’s easy to see, but the evergreens and conifers show it most vividly in that their new growth so brightly contrasts with the old.

We’ve had a rainy winter and spring, so the ground is quite saturated. I think that’s contributing to the explosive grown in the trees this year. To be honest, we’re overdue give the dryness of the past couple of years. Even the grass is growing like mad (much to the disapproval of my nose), but it’s good to see. Very good to see.

So spring continues and summer will come, but I’m in no hurry. I’m enjoying the show.

Right now there’s quite the light and sound show going on as we get the first real downpour of the year. Except for some snow earlier this winter, we haven’t had a lot of weather come our way lately. Spring around here often brings more rain and more cloudy days, which is to be expected. “April showers bring May flowers,” as the saying goes. But this downpour feels like something wicked that comes in the burning dog days of summer when you know it’s going to cool things off only a bit and what’ll be left is the sticky, swampy humidity of Washington DC in summer.

I think I like rain because, at least in my mind, it would be the only thing that could give relief to my allergies (at least until the modern pharmaceutical industry came around) but I’m really not sure. It’s definitely fun to go play in the rain, but I certainly would do it around here, what with the giant high-voltage electrical tower (read: lightning rod) about 30 yards from my home. I seem to remember playing in the rain as a kid. At least I like to think I did. I remember many things from my childhood, but that’s not one of them.

I do recall one day, it must have been in the first grade, and it was time to go home and there was a big storm headed our way. It wasn’t a hurricane, that’s for sure, even though they were common in south Louisiana growing up. But it was not your run-of-the mill rain-shower, either. It must have been three in the afternoon, but the sky was dark like it is after sunset. And the rain was coming down hard. I remember the covered walkways we had between buildings. The water would pool up in certain places under those walkways, so it was either get your feet wet or get your head soaked. I must have run through that to get to the bus, but I don’t remember that. I have this image of the dark skies and the pouring rain and the puddle of water where the concrete was not quite level.

One of the things I miss most about rain is the lack of certain sounds when living in a condo. There are two stories above me and I no longer get to hear the rain on the roof, a calming, comforting sound if ever there was one. I have to content myself with the pluck-pluck-pluck of the water dripping on the downspout outside the window and the sound of the rain on gardens and sidewalk, cars and concrete.

Still, though, there’s nothing like a good thunderstorm. If this keeps up any longer, they’ll be calling for flood warnings down by the river tomorrow morning.

Another huge flash-boom. The storm sounds like it’s right on top of us, but there are still echos of thunder a ways off. I hope this lasts all night… I’ll sleep like a baby if it does.