Here's just a list...

Now here's just a list, of some stuff.

Actually, this is from going through and trying to clean up my January 2012 photos. I need to either do a better job of labeling/foldering them, or take fewer. It can take hours to go through and process them when you get behind the 8 ball.

We made Oaxacan chili chocolate cookies (as well as a couple other kinds of cookies) for all of our building staff at Xmas. These had a little heat to them that took a couple seconds to kick in, and were either loved or hated: the building manager loved them; the maintenance engineer had to get his kids to eat them. J and I both thought they were delicious.

I can't remember, or tell, from the image whether these were chives, or fresh basil. Either way it was tasty. 

J loves my flash fried brussels sprouts with garlic, so they are making a repeat appearance on this blog. (Just search for "brussels" in the search box. Even I was a little surprised at how many times brussels sprouts have shown up. Possibly second only to tofu and onions.) 

Sometimes I get a hair up my ass and do things like buy #10 cans of pinto beans and garbanzo beans. Then have to use them. Top portion, clockwise from left: pinto bean chipotle hummus, roasted red pepper hummus, UltraGarlic(tm) hummus; then in larger bottom container is a sushi tofu salad with a pinto bean patty on top.

This is a pretty classic food porn picture from my kitchen: onions, and tofu. Yum.

This is those same onions, fancified a little with fresh ginger.

Nothing too strange about wanting to get the last little bits of olive oil out of your container, is there? 

So why, then, would it be strange with shampoo, even if it requires duct tape? 

Stuffed mushrooms. 

A shockingly tasty vegan airplane breakfast on a Delta flight ATL-SFO. (Love the free upgrades on cross country flights!) 

Lemon zest is photogenic.

Big dudes

The two guys sitting in 7C and 7D on this tiny little regional jet are about 300 and 350 pounds. Have fun, guys!

My first mobile blog. Woo.

Sitting in a hotel room in Tucson, testing out mobile blogging, since I've recently joined the mobile generation. Yes, friends, that's right: I no longer have a cell phone that is six years old and reminiscent of a coffin, I have a Droid.

So far, as I told A who waxed enthusiastic about the Droid, I like most everything about it, and love a couple things. I LOVE the GPS navigation. It works vastly better than either of the two standalone GPS units I've owned. Being able to drag the google map around along your route is huge, and the street view photos provide a much better context when you're unclear on something than just a map with streets.

Obligatory flight/airport snark: woman boards the obnoxiously small plane; and I smell her from an aisle away. I immediately think ohhh, I hope the smoker isn't my immediate seatmate. She is. She sits down, drops her stuff on the floor, and starts fishing in her purse. She immediately offers me a mint. I politely decline, and she says okay, and puts them back without taking one herself. She says "Are you the one with the onions?" A little confused, I say, "uhhh, no." She responds "Good, 'cause someone just ate a ton of onions. if you figure out who it is, let me know, so i can offer them a mint." Her cigarettes are visible in her purse, and she smells like the smoking room at SLC. (When will the geniuses that run public health programs realize that if you make it easy for people to kill themselves and the people around them, they will, and it you make it more difficult, they'll be less inclined? Or at least not smell so freshly bad when they sit down next to me?)

That would be the whole story, except for this brief epilogue: she dunked her nasty little biscotti cookies in her diet coke to eat them.

Fortunately, it was a relatively short flight.

Now running around in Arizona, but apparently with plenty of time to blog.

Honestly truly overheard on Delta 844

Passenger in 1D (first class) is lucky enough to be the only person to get a pre-flight drink, as the pilots were apparently trying to hustle us out of PIT to avoid ground delays in ATL. Woman in her 50s or 60s, somewhere between obese and morbidly obese, orders “a vodka with just a tiny splash of orange juice.” It's almost 6 in the evening, so nothing too surprising so far.

Woman gets her drink, and begins slurping it down like she just walked out of the Sonoran desert and missed the drive-through liquor stores in the Arizona stretch.

Somehow the conversation with the (amazingly friendly) flight attendant turns to this (paraphrased, but pretty darn close):

Flight attendant: You should watch it, because alcohol affects you double in the air than it does on the ground.

Editor's note:(A marginally dubious claim, which I'm unable to find primary evidence to support or disprove. The best indications are that the added intensity of alcohol consumption in flight is really rooted in dehydration, so you mostly need to be sure to consume a lot of water. A more profound impact than on the ground? Maybe. Double? There is zero evidence i can find for this. But I digress.)

Woman: Really? I have never, ever heard that, and I fly all the time.

Flight attendant: Oh yeah, absolutely, no question about it.

Woman Who Flies All The Time:Wow -- I have never heard that. I'll be fine, though: I can sit here and drink a fifth of vodka straight and not even feel it.

Flight attendant: Oh wow, well, you won't be getting that tonight. (It's an hour and a half flight, incidentally.)

Fifth of Vodka Woman: Oh yeah, I can drink anyone, and I mean anyone, under the table in about three minutes! Any man, any woman!

(inaudible conversation, brief pause as the flight attendant goes and does some other stuff)

Woman Who Can Drink Any Man, Any Woman, Under The Table In About Three Minutes: Say, do you sell these little bottles on board?

Flight attendant: No, sorry, we don't.

Woman Who Wants To Give The Idea Of Buy On Board A Whole New Meaning:That's too bad, 'cause I've been taking care of my mother who is 91 all week, and she has a whole line of them on her shelf, and I thought I'd take her a couple. (That she is apparently heading the wrong direction for such a gift is part of the nature of the Folk Process, with apologies to Dry Branch Fire Squad.)

Flight attendant: Well, you know you can buy them at any liquor store?

Woman Who Wants To Give Her 91 Year Old Mother A Couple Shooter Bottles of Cheap Vodka As A Gift To Add To Mother's Collection: Really? I never heard of that! Never saw them!

Flight attendant: Sure, every liquor store sells them.

Woman Who Can Drink A Fifth of Vodka In About Three Minutes And Not Even Feel It And Can Drink Any Man Or Woman Under The Table In About Three Minutes But Doesn't Know Liquor Stores Sell Small Shooter Bottles Of Cheap Vodka: Well, I'll just have to look for that!

A few minutes go by, we continue the pre-flight process, and next thing I hear is the flight attendant leaning in close and telling the woman kindly, but firmly and repeatedly, that she needs to behave herself. Gosh, can't imagine why.

People I don't understand

1) People who launch themselves out of their seats on the airplane, so they can occupy the aisle for the several minutes it takes the ground crew and flight crew to get the door open. Then it turns out the (specific jerk in question) needs to wait at planeside for his gate-checked bag to come out, just like the people he was jockeying to get in front of.

2) People who rush to the televisions in the airport to see the football game. (Confidential to football fans: the game won't change because you're watching it, and the ten minutes you see of grown men smashing into one another will be much more interesting without all the pap and filler when you watch it tomorrow on Sportscenter.)

3) People who don't tip, or even worse, tip badly. Examples: too numerous to mention. You know who you are.

4) Self-important TSA officers, who seem to think their scowl and facially insincere grunt of "how are you" somehow imparts some sort of gravitas or authority. Confidential to TSA: you're largely incompetent rentacops that 98% of the regular-traveling public despises. Oh, and suspiciously sneering at me when you look at the x-ray of my carryon isn't intimidating: it's just silly.

Boarding soon for segment five of nine in two weeks, so I should get my stuff together.

Airports and etc.

After a frenzy to get packed and ready for the bike trip, I'm finally en route.

The morning flight from ATL to LAX was pleasant due to an upgrade, but unpleasant due to none of the reading lights working. The flight attendants were apologetic about this, but still didn't seem to think it worth leaving the overhead lights on, and the always helpful fellow passengers all closed their windows so they could watch The Fast and the Furious, and bad romcom. I got a little reading done until it started to really strain my eyes, and then I did some more eye-straining reading on my netbook.

Now in the Delta Skyclub in the crappy, run-down Terminal 5 at LAX. The lounge is nice enough, if quite crowded and loud. I'm actually listening to music (Gomez: Get Miles, appropriate in so many ways) which I almost never do in the airport or lounges. This is to drown out the woman who has been prattling nonstop with her companion since she came in. Well, not truly non-stop: she takes breaks to prattle loudly on her cell phone, too. All while she keeps her feet up on the chair. She's a teacher, but apparently hasn't learned Inside Voice.

The food at Delta Skyclubs pretty much always stinks, with a few exceptions (JFK terminal 2 has some really good snacks and appetizers at certain hours.) I'm hungry, and the food options in Terminal 5 mostly suck, so I was pleased to see them roll out a cart of food when they took away the breakfast foods. What was it? Some sort of caramel-fudge-flourless-chocolate cake thing. At 10:30 in the morning. Yes, really. My favorite response to this (well, the only response other than mine so far) came from a friend via e-mail: "turtle fudge cake? gross. i wouldn't eat that at any time of day."

It does appear that GrossCake(tm) is going to be the only option, so I'll be sticking with pretzels and beer. (Hey, it's now after 11!) I mean, c'mon: you can't even bring out some soft, wilted celery and carrots with grayish/white caking?

In other travel (news), my travels in the next month and a week will have me in the following airports: ATL, LAX, SLC, FCA, SMF, SFO, PIT, JFK, SEA. Woo.

Maybe I'll go hunt down better food, since I still have an hour and a half. A little web searching did indicate that it's possible to walk from Terminal 5 to Terminals 6, 7, and 8. Yay informationsuperinfobahn!