Sleep Spent

Please note: Thanksgiving pictures are now available. It was a potluck thing, and it was a smashing success: we had tons of leftovers. That was quite a feat, with over twenty people in attendance.

I’ve decided to start posting new things that I discover as I’m using Apple’s products; little things that make me glad I use a Mac. The first one is the way iPhoto zooms.

If you any part of a photo selected and then use the zoom slider, iPhoto first crops the photo so the selected area is centered. Then, it proceeds to enlarge the picture, always relative to the center of the selected area. Smart, no?

Mark asked me to post the recipe, and I see no reason not to share the wealth. So, without further ado, I present to you my mother’s time-honored recipe for:

Pumpkin Upside Down Cake

Filling

3 eggs

2 cans pumpkin (1 pound each)

1¼ cups sugar

1 can evaporated milk (12 or 13 oz)

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

½ tsp ginger

Topping

1 pkg yellow cake mix

¾ cup (1½ sticks) butter, melted

1 cup walnuts, chopped

Make filling; stir until well blended. Pour into ungreased 13″×9″×2″ baking dish. Sprinkle dry cake mix over filling. Drizzle melted butter over cake mix. Bake 30 minutes at 350 °F. Remove from oven; sprinkle nuts on top; return to oven and bake 30 minutes longer or until topping is golden brown.

I’ve also used pie plates instead of 13″×9″×2″ pan. Just adjust the amount of butter to accommodate.

(My apologies for this being in Imperial units. I figured it would be more exact and certainly less time-intensive for me to leave it that way. Might I direct you to Google?)

It really must be Thanksgiving; my parents sent me fixins for my mom’s world famous Pumpkin Upside Down Cake!

Other interesting culinary adventures include the preparation of a science experiment for my presentation on cholera today. (It involved a glass jar, some diluted apple juice and some grilled sausages. ’Nuff said.) Suffice it to say, I’ve been spending plenty of time in the kitchen of late.

Thank you mom and dad!

I was mostly bored by Bath, a beautiful Georgian/Victorian town in the far West of Britain, two hours’ drive from London. Yes, there are the ruins of Roman baths there. Yes, the architecture is beautiful and surprisingly uniform. And yes, I did get to go to Sally Lunn’s restaurant on Lilliput street, where I had a fantastic (and world famous) Lunn Bun with a chicken breast and plenty of sauce on it.

However, after touring the baths, examining a sample of the arcitecture (see: uniform) and eating at Sally Lunn’s, I was left with very little to occupy my time.

I wandered around and eventually found the Victoria Art Gallery, which was quite small. It was indoors, though, and the weather was dreary, so I toured the place quickly. The most interesting piece I saw was “Scarab,” a striking sculpture of a woman crouching in a fetal position with her arms laid down her sides and her fingers clasped at the back. Unfortunately, I can’t find a picture of it, and I wasn’t allowed to take one there.

I was tired when I finished walking through the museum and decided to take a quick nap. I woke up just in time to catch our coach back home. Traffic on the M4 was horrendous in the westward direction. There was a seveal-kilometer section that was completely empty. I presume it was to clean up the two wrecks we saw as we were passing by this stretch of road; traffic had to be diverted, and it wasn’t pretty. I’m glad we were eastbound!

Thanks, Val, for the suggestion of the Lunn Bun!

“Other critics will warn of moral chaos. But moral chaos is what marriage prevents. If you want family values, the simplest thing to do is to let people form families.” (article)

I’m really looking forward to the time, not too far in the future now, where the world will collectively look back on this whole gay marriage issue and think, “what were they thinking?” Not to completely equate the two movements, but I believe it will be rather simliar to the disgust and disbelief we now feel when looking at something like the suffragettes. No one would now say that women shouldn’t be voting. And yet, historically, it was a very recent development (only about 80 years ago).

I ran across this article on Slate that tries to apply lessons learned by the abortion movement to this new issue. This same point was raised in a Speech Communications class I took from a feminist last year. In the beginning, the pro-abortion movement was unable to convince the American public because the public found (and still largly finds) abortion repugnant. However, the abortion rights folks realized that what they needed to do was sell America on the choice — something that is very much a part of our political and social tradition. These days, no one ever says they’re pro-abortion. People say they’re pro-choice.

The gay marriage issue will be won using a similar tactic. Take the homosexuality out of it, and who can argue with two people who love each other getting married? What politician is really going to come out and say that they are against marriage?

A few brief snippets of goings-on:

• The guitar now has strings, which I bought at a local music store, and I’ve been playing nightly. Too bad my callouses are gone.
• Yesterday, I visited the National Gallery and took in more than my share of 19th and 20th Century art. I didn’t know this beforehand, but that museum has a whole section of French art, with a pretty nice collection of Rodin, my favorite artist. I even got to see The Bronze Age in person! I was stoked. And it looked much better standing in front of me.

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This one is going to have to be quick; there’s people waiting. I’m staying at Sir Toby’s hostel in Prague. It’s very nice here; the people seem very friendly, and the receptionist was playing Sonic Youth. So I’m pretty much right at home. :-)

In the common room they have a guitar sitting on top of a chest of drawers. I haven’t played in months!!! I was so excited — until I tried to tune it and the G string broke. >_<!! So tomorrow is going to include getting a set of strings. Hopefully they’re cheaper than in the states.

I visited the Jewish Quarter today as well as the Strahov (sp?) Library. I liked the Library, but didn’t get the Jewish area. It was also incredibly cold, so that might have had something to do with it. :-) I’m going to go back to the Old-New Synagogue.

OK, that’s it from me for now!

If you happen to have the chance to see Želary, take it! I just got back from this touching Czech film about a member of the Czech resistance in Prague during World War II. It was in Czech, but subtitled in English. The lead actress was beautiful and really did a great job in her role as a woman who was found out by the Gestapo and had to hide in a remote Czech village. The only problem: in order to be accepted by the people living there, she needs to marry the man she’s staying with.

Alex and I went to see this on a whim. Alex had seen (and hated) The Matrix: Revolutions, and it was one of the few other films there we both hadn’t seen. (That’s not to say that I wanted to see The Matrix III....) Clearly, we were really pleased with it, and not least because it only cost us 99,- Kĉ! That’s about $3.50 — cheaper than it costs to rent a DVD in the States.

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Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics

I was a particular combination of bored and tired last night, which led me to stay in at our (very nice) hotel. While most of my fellow travellers were partying at Europe’s largest discoteque (described by a particularly surly classmate as a “five story death trap”), I read a little Pickwick Papers and watched a little television.

I had flipped on the tube when, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a naked woman dancing to techno music. I immediately put this down to (a) the very liberated stance Europe seems to take on carnal pleasure and (b) the Czech version of my experience in Germany, where 23:00 means soft core porn on the public TV stations (w00t). It turned out to be something far more interesting.

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