not even sorry, buster!

i don't like chocolate. 

i mean, i will eat it. i don't hate it. i am not allergic to it, altho my grandmother was. i just don't like it. on the gamut of sweets, i would choose chocolate last. vanilla is okay, better than chocolate, but not the winner either.

the real action starts to happen around the caramel/butterscotch zone. the brown sugar family, as it were. throw me some molasses, honey! or, for that matter, some honey itself will do.

spice cake, pound cake, 

nutmeg in your boiled custard,

chess pie's the best pie -

not even sorry, buster!

i'll take 

brown-sugar-cinnamon 

pop tarts 

any time

and i don't 

even care 

that they mess 

up the rhyme

scheme!

carrot cake, haystacks, 

oatmeal scotchies, snickerdoodles,

pecan pie is second best,

and biscoff? i can eat oodles!

i am also partial to your fruit varietals - strawberry cheesecake, skittles, starburst, sweetarts, necco wafers, jelly beans, and so on, but that's not what this post is about.

just in case

i am a just in case carrier. in my backpack, you'd find the normal essentials like wallet, phone, burt's bees plus the superessentials like pens, nail file, kleenex plus unusual but not outrageous bandaids, dental floss, tylenol plus the sort of random shit that i needed once but didn't have at the time so now i carry it around all the time like one plastic spoon. 

one plastic spoon is not large. it doesn't take up a lot of space, doesn't weigh much. and it's dead useful. you get a yogurt at the airport or the gas station during a road trip, say, and presto, you need a spoon. 

but thing is you rarely need a spoon. and super rarely do you need a spoon and you could not have procured one, say, near the yogurts in the cold case. 

that spoon isn't the huge deal, though. just a plastic spoon. the huge deal is not the spoon. the huge deal is that carrying around a plastic spoon is a bit of a gateway drug to carrying around a pack of cards, warm gloves in the summertime, five pens and two pencils, your contact lens prescription, and a random red plastic whistle that you don't know where it came from but hey it might be useful at some as-yet unknown future point on the space-time continuum. 

so you see the problem, right? one thing leads to another and pretty soon i can't find the spoon when i need it, if i even remember i have it, so i am at the airport eating yogurt with a plastic spoon i picked up next to the cold case where i bought the yogurt and i finish the yogurt and i am on the verge of tossing the spoon with the yogurt container when i think, hey maybe keep the spoon... just in case...

picture pages!

we took our first-round-vaccinated selves on a trip! we wore masks and did our best to not get too close to people and all that. the whole thing felt really safe. well... maybe the amount of ice cream was risky...

anyhoo - i brought you back some pictures!

this is an oil drum rocket from a random gas station where we had to stop because we thought we could make it to sam's but the light came on so we stopped at this random place. 

this is from the tiny town we visited in the foothills of the appalachians. it had some significant steepness! this hill looks less steep in the pic but that's ok because what i wanted to show you is the steps up to the house. they are like alice in wonderland steps - all twists and turns. plus, made of stone. so cool!

this is visible in the previous pic but i wanted to give you a better look at it. it's an elevated sidewalk. what's up with that? so interesting! who decided to build it that way, and why? it goes the length of the street -- maybe a couple tenths of a mile. i did not see any indication that it continues that way on any adjoining streets. i am fascinated by it! problem is, this tiny appalachian-adjacent town doesn't have detailed accounts of artifacts such as elevated sidewalks and their origins. at least, none that i have yet located... i haven't given up.

saw this in the woodcraft shop in the tiny town. look at that red stripe! it's literally red wood! i would have bought it but $145....

this is from a lake we walked around, 3 miles. it's 20 minutes or so from the tiny town. you can see the weather was grey and foggy, and i will tell you it was also like 55°. that's right - my favourite weather! and you know i like hiking and lakes. it was a good day. 

3.14159

that's as much pi as i know. 

now, pie is a different question. 

as far as dessert choices go, given the gamut from which to choose, i'd probably go for a cheesecake, maybe a carrot cake with cream cheese icing. during the season, a claxton fruit cake hits the spot. i do like ice cream... a nice traverse city cherry from kilwins... mmm. but as for pie, i like two: chess pie and pecan pie. (the latter is basically chess pie with nuts.)

when i was a child, i didn't know that chess pie was a southern thing, nor did i know my paternal grandmother (ole sweet) was a chess pie magician. apparently they're difficult to make correctly. who knew?

chess is the pound cake of pies -- butter, sugar, eggs. less flour overall - just in the crust - but same basic ingredients. the thing is that it's difficult to get the consistency right. too custardy and too runny are common. too crystallized is less common and more acceptable, but still not correct. there's a specific consistency for a chess pie that is not only aesthetically pleasing but also texturally comforting. 

chess pie squares mimic the flavour but do not approach the texture. i've never made either, but i am sure the squares are simpler. 

if you have never had chess pie, i pity you. ole sweet is dead, so if you want the best, you'll have to get one from her in the hereafter. 

sunshine steal

this weekend we spring forward which means at 2AM sunday morning, through no fault of its own, an entire hour of time will be erased. ERASED -- as if it had never existed! at 2AM, it will become 3AM. boom. do not pass go, do not collect $200, go straight to oblivion. 

prosecutor, to defendant..: where were you at 2:15AM on sunday, 14 march 2021?

defense attorney: objection! there was no 2:15AM on sunday, 14 march 2021!

judge: suh-stained....

i don't like losing an hour. i prefer the fall-back scenario, where we magically get to spend another hour sleeping. pluslywise, falling back adds daylight to the morningtime. springing forward means it'll be dark again when i get up. i feel like it's just now becoming light when i get up in the morning. 

so it's not a simple thing -- not a 1:1. the hour that's actually removed is the hour of daylight when i am emptying the dishwasher and brewing the caffeine. it's not 2AM that's taken, it's a sunshine steal!

plimsoll joy

we are all standing up for something these days, and in doing so, we are stomping on each others toes. and so, our collective toes ache.

we could get steel-toed shoes to protect our toes, but some of us are all enamored with our current shoes or with looking at our toes themselves -- or (not to be too philosophical, but...) the shoes or the toes are the very thing for which we are standing up. 

it's like this: if i am standing up for bare feet, i do not want steel-toed shoes covering the very thing for which i am standing up. nor do i want your steel-toed toes or any otherclad toes standing on my bare toes. watch it, buddy! i am standing up for bare toes - you stand down!

but, that's the conundrum, innit? who should stand down - that's the question. 

if i am standing up for bare feet, and you are standing up for steel-toed shoes, we are fairly diametrically opposed there, see?

now, on one level, it's fine. it's a notoriously free country. wear shoes. don't wear shoes. it's your choice. live and let live! huzzah!

but when you start stepping on my toes, well then we have a problem, buddy. your freedom is encroaching on my freedom. we all have freedom, sure, sure. but the diametrical freedoms cannot, by definition, coexist. they simply cannot. it's a matter of physics, really. i mean, you are all - protect your toes! and i am like - just gerroff 'em ya big galoot. we can't be at the same place at the same time.

now, i am not talking about purposeful toe-stompers here. purposeful toe-stompers are clearly actively violating other people's space, rights, and freedoms. i am talking about inadvertently stepping on each other's toes.

to complicate the matter further, there aren't strict boundaries between stompers and stompees. some days you do the stomping, some days you are the stomped. steel-toed shoe aficionados can be stomped on and barefooters can stomp. it's not as simple as it looks.

and it's easy to say, if you don't like it - leave! but then who gets to live near the froyo shop? 

pluswise, if you only hang out with other barefooters or other steel-toeders, you are going to miss out completely on the joy of the plimsoll. or... well... the plimsollers will tell you there is joy in the plimsoll... it's not an innate joy, no... i didn't mean to imply that is is an innate joy, okay? so calm down. 

everyone just calm down. 

london in the winter then

in london during summer, it doesn't get dark until like 10, 10:30pm. in the summer where i live, it gets dark about 8:30pm, maybe a little later, and the days seem to go forever. i don't want to think about having an even later sunset. so much daytime! i like my sleep. i guess i will take london in the winter then.